The Swedish vendor and Nokia both nailed an eight-year partnership with the newly merged operator to modernise and maintain its network
VodafoneThree has chosen Sweden’s Ericsson as a major provider of its new mobile network, including the 5G Standalone core, in an eight-year partnership deal. The merger of Three UK and Vodafone was finalised in June after a long approvals process. The merged operator is now the largest in the UK and serves almost 29 million customers.
The merged operator has considerable ground to make up with its network – one of the new operator’s major justifications for the merger was it needed the scale to make investment in the network economically viable. VodafoneThree pledged an investment of £11 billion that will see 5G coverage delivered to 99% of the population in the UK by 2034, but Ericsson says the revised goal is to cover 99.95% of the UK’s population with 5G SA by that date.
For comparison, EE, formerly the UK’s largest mobile provider and winner of the awards for its network, achieved 5G SA coverage of more than half the UK population by the end of August 2025 and plans to offer coverage to more than 41 million people by spring 2026.
Radio systems and software
The contract also covers Ericsson Radio System products and software to “power a significant majority of the enhanced VodafoneThree radio network,” the vendor states. Ericsson claims, “the high performance and programmability capabilities of Ericsson 5G SA will enable VodafoneThree to drive national UK digitalization through differentiated connectivity for enterprise and industry using AI, automation, and virtual/augmented reality”.
Ericsson’s radio and core connectivity will exclusively cover the UK’s four capital cities – London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – and other large centres of population including Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Aberdeen, Hull and Bournemouth. The first deployments will begin “soon,” apparently, and the contract will include new Ericsson 5G RAN products.
Nokia part of the mix
Nokia has also been selected by VodafoneThree in “a significant new eight-year deal” to supply products from its AirScale Radio Access Network (RAN) and core networks portfolio in the UK. It does not reveal the monetary value of the contract. Nokia also won a separate deal to maintain the Three UK’s current core for an unspecified number of years.
Under the agreement, Nokia will deploy products from its AirScale RAN portfolio to about 7,000 sites nationwide, which run on its ReefShark System-on-Chip technology to modernise VodafoneThree’s network across the UK. The deployment will include Nokia’s latest generation of Habrok Massive MIMO radios, multiband Pandion Remote Radio Heads, baseband solutions and the MantaRay network management system.
“We said we would deliver at pace and, just a few months in, we are delighted to be working with trusted strategic partners…to deliver our ambition of building the UK’s best network. They bring the scale and expertise needed to accelerate the delivery of a resilient, secure, world-class and future-ready network, and together, we are laying the foundations for the UK’s digital future.” said Max Taylor, CEO, VodafoneThree.
