How Nokia is Powering Orange France’s 5G Network Expansion
Nokia recently announced that it would be signing a four-year contract extension with Orange France to upgrade its 5G radio infrastructure.
The telco giant will be deploying its energy-efficient AirScale portfolio to support Orange France in its expansion, aiming to deliver an enhanced customer experience with best-in-class speeds, capacity and performance across Orange’s footprint in Southeastern and Western France.
“Our long-standing partnership with Orange continues as we collaborate to upgrade its 5G network,” Nokia stated via a LinkedIn statement. “This extension reinforces our commitment to enabling premium network performance and exceptional connectivity experiences for Orange's customers - now strengthened by a new four-year contract extension.”
Improving network efficiency
Under the deal, Nokia will supply equipment from its industry-leading O-RAN-compliant 5G AirScale portfolio.
- Nokia's next-generation industry-leading, high-capacity AirScale baseband solutions
- Lightweight and high-output Massive MIMO Habrok radios
- Nokia’s Pandion portfolio of FDD multiband remote radio heads to cover all use cases and deployment scenarios
These are all powered by the company’s energy-efficient ReefShark System-on-Chip technology and combine to provide improved coverage and capacity. Additionally, Nokia will supply its AI-powered radio network management solution, MantaRay NM, which supports all radio and mobile core technologies.
Orange will also trial Nokia’s 5G Cloud RAN solutions to assess the transition of its network towards Cloud RAN technology.
Nokia’s mission is to support its global customers to more seamlessly transition to Cloud RAN technology with future-proof solutions. These ultimately drive greater innovation for communication service providers (CSPs) and enterprises.
By adopting a comprehensive anyRAN approach, Nokia hopes it will provide the best choice of strategic options for their RAN evolution with purpose-built, hybrid, or Cloud RAN solutions. As a result, customers will be able to evolve their networks and continue to deliver maximum field performance.
“This new contract extension with Nokia and their industry-leading equipment portfolio will support our pioneering efforts to drive superior customer experience further, reduce our environmental footprint, and make our network as energy efficient as possible,” says Emmanuel Lugagne Delpon, CTO at Orange France.
Bolstering global connectivity
Nokia’s operations in France play a critical role in developing the company’s future products and technologies. The country houses its global competence centres for 5G, cybersecurity and the Internet of Things (IoT).
The telco has partnered with Orange in the past, having formed an Open RAN network-sharing agreement in 2023 to cover rural areas across Europe where both companies have mobile networks.
Initial commercial sites deployed as part of a pilot in a rural area near Bucharest in Romania later that year with support from Dell, Samsung and Wind River. Both operators have subsequently trialled 4G calls over the shared Open RAN network and expanded the project to include 2G virtualised RAN.
Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, shares: “We are excited to continue our long-standing partnership with Orange France and contribute positively towards their network performance, sustainability goals, and commitment to net carbon neutrality.
“Our industry-leading, energy-efficient AirScale portfolio and AI-powered MantaRay network management solution will enhance Orange’s network performance and deliver premium connectivity experiences to Orange customers.”
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