BT picks Ericsson for 5G network

Decision comes after the government banned Huawei from the core of the UK's 5G network

Ericsson has beaten the likes of Nokia and Cisco to become the supplier for BT's 5G network.

The deal will see the Swedish firm deploy a cloud-native mobile packet core for 4G, non-standalone 5G and standalone 5G.

BT said that Ericsson was selected after testing its technology against others suppliers.

The telco had been in tests with the other manufacturers, including Cisco and Nokia, last year.

Howard Watson, CTIO at BT, said: "Having evaluated different 5G Core vendors, we have selected Ericsson as the best option on the basis of both lab performance and future roadmap.

"We are looking forward to working together as we build out our converged 4G and 5G core network across the UK.

"An agile, cloud-native core infrastructure is at the heart of our ambition to enable the next generation of exciting 5G services for our customers and give the UK the world-class digital infrastructure it needs to win in the future global economy."

The state of the UK's 5G rollout had been up in the air for some time, while the government pondered whether to allow the technology of controversial Chinese vendor Huawei to be included.

But a decision was finally reached in January, when Boris Johnson said that Huawei could only be used in non-core parts of the network, going against demands from the US which has pushed its allies to go for a total ban.

BT said that the impact of this decision would cost it around £500m, with Huawei a key supplier of telco equipment.

On the new partnership Ericsson's UK boss Marielle Lindgren said: "Ericsson and BT have a long history of working together and we are delighted to continue that relationship with this new dual-mode 5G Core deal.

"We, at Ericsson, have been in the UK for over a century and delivering the next generation of connectivity here is yet another proud part of our story."