Nokia announced that it has been selected by Spark, New Zealand’s telecommunications and digital services company, to support its accelerated 5G rollout, which will provide 5G coverage to approximately 90% of the population by the end of 2023.

The deal will see Spark deploy Nokia’s latest 5G RAN technology across a large part of the rollout, while simultaneously upgrading 4G at these sites using Nokia products. The upgraded service will provide Spark customers with 5G connectivity, bringing faster speeds and additional capacity.

Under the deal, Nokia RAN equipment will be used to upgrade parts of Spark’s mobile network using products from its latest AirScale radio portfolio, all powered by Nokia’s energy efficient ReefShark System-on-Chip technology.

These new products have the potential to help deliver up to 10x faster data speeds to Spark’s mobile and wireless broadband customers, while consuming much less energy than earlier generations of network equipment.

Nokia’s AirScale portfolio equipment is also software upgradeable from 3G/4G to 5G, enabling Spark to remotely upgrade 4G sites to 5G, when required. Together this energy efficiency and upgradeability makes Spark’s network investment future proof while also lowering its total cost of ownership.

Nokia has a long-standing partnership with Spark and has delivered several projects across Spark’s network including 5G RAN, IP, core, and optical transport. These projects have set the foundation for delivery of a superior network performance with ubiquitous 5G connectivity.

Rajesh Singh, general manager of value management at Spark New Zealand, comments, “We’re immensely excited about bringing 5G to approximately 90% of New Zealand’s population by the end of calendar year 2023 and to provide the foundation that we believe will support Kiwi businesses across a range of industries to adapt, transform and grow in an increasingly digital world. We’re also pleased to be upgrading parts of our 4G network to support the unprecedented increase in demand for data we are seeing each year. We look forward to continuing to work collaboratively with our partner, Nokia on this exciting next phase of our 5G rollout.”

Rob Joyce, CTO of Australia and New Zealand at Nokia, says, “We’re proud to support Spark as it delivers the benefits of 5G to more of New Zealand. By helping Spark be 5G ready and reduce its total cost of ownership with our AirScale products, it can deliver 5G much faster and further than before, allowing its consumer and enterprise customers to reap the rewards of 5G in more and more places across New Zealand.”

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