Eurobites: Ericsson gets Telia RAN gig in Lithuania

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ericsson completes Cradlepoint acquisition; BT takes 5G to university; Nokia faces knock-back in patents battle with Lenovo.

Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe

November 3, 2020

2 Min Read
Eurobites: Ericsson gets Telia RAN gig in Lithuania

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Ericsson completes Cradlepoint acquisition; BT takes 5G to university; Nokia faces knock-back in patents battle with Lenovo.

  • Telia has chosen Ericsson to modernize its Lithuanian radio access network (RAN) and prepare the ground for an upgrade to 5G. Ericsson will be Telia's sole RAN partner, and expects to upgrade around 2,000 sites in the country over the next three years, beginning in 2021, though the formal partnership agreement is set for five years. Telia intends to start offering 5G services in Lithuania "as soon as possible," pending a spectrum auction yet to be announced by the regulatory authority. Rival vendor Nokia has already bagged the 5G core contract in Lithuania. (See Telia picks Nokia for standalone 5G core in six markets.)

    • And Ericsson has wasted no time in completing its $1.1 billion takeover of Cradlepoint, a deal that was only announced on September 18. Based in Idaho, Cradlepoint sells edge routers and related services to businesses, with the emergency services sector something of a specialty. Cradlepoint will operate as a standalone subsidiary within Ericsson.

    • BT has switched on what it claims is the UK's "first dedicated public 5G network for a connected campus," at the University of Warwick in England's Midlands region. The move, described as the first phase of a "strategic alliance" between BT and the university, brings "ultrafast" 5G mobile coverage to students, staff and visitors across the 720-acre site and to people in surrounding areas through the BT-owned EE mobile network. The network coverage will also be extended to the university's Creative and Digital Communities incubator in nearby Leamington Spa, home to the "Silicon Spa" games industry technology cluster.

    • Nokia has suffered a setback in its patents battle with Lenovo, with a German appeals court lifting the enforcement of an injunction won by the Finnish vendor against the PC giant. As Reuters reports, the case centers on Lenovo's use of Nokia's patented H.264 video-compression technology.

    • Enea, the Swedish data analytics company, has won a contract which sees it deploying its Policy Manager product on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud for an unidentified Tier 1 South American mobile operator. Earlier this month, Enea announced that it had acquired Aptilo, a provider of policy and access control solutions for carrier Wi-Fi and IoT, for 92 million Swedish kronor ($10.3 million).

    • Telecom Italia (TIM) has issued a statement scotching rumors that someone has been lined up for the position of CEO at FiberCop, a new entity being created by TIM and Open Fiber. TIM says the CEO won't be chosen until close to the time FiberCop becomes operational, which is expected to be in the first quarter of 2021.

      — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

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About the Author

Paul Rainford

Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading

Paul is based on the Isle of Wight, a rocky outcrop off the English coast that is home only to a colony of technology journalists and several thousand puffins.

He has worked as a writer and copy editor since the age of William Caxton, covering the design industry, D-list celebs, tourism and much, much more.

During the noughties Paul took time out from his page proofs and marker pens to run a small hotel with his other half in the wilds of Exmoor. There he developed a range of skills including carrying cooked breakfasts, lying to unwanted guests and stopping leaks with old towels.

Now back, slightly befuddled, in the world of online journalism, Paul is thoroughly engaged with the modern world, regularly firing up his VHS video recorder and accidentally sending text messages to strangers using a chipped Nokia feature phone.

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