Sweden’s Ericsson and Chinese telecom giant Huawei have been commissioned by Sweden’s TeliaSonera to modernise and expand Norway’s entire mobile network, the companies announced on Tuesday.
Ericsson has received an order for northern Norway, while Huawei has won a contract to build out the mobile network in southern Norway.
“TeliaSonera choosing us to modernise the network is an important milestone in our cooperation,” said Jens Friberg, sales manager at Huawei in charge of business with TeliaSonera.
The order includes the modernising of the country’s 2G and 3G networks, as well as the expansion of its 4G network. Data traffic is growing rapidly and a modernisation of the networks is necessary, Ericsson said in a statement.
“We are glad to be part of that journey and proud that we are now also TeliaSonera’s vendor within 2G and 3G in Norway,” said Robert Puskaric, head of Ericsson in northern Europe and Asia.
Work will begin immediately and be completed in 2012. The company did not disclose the value of the order to Huawei.
“We have selected Huawei and Ericsson to deliver the network based on their high quality technology and competitive total solution,” said Claes Nycander, chief technology officer for mobility services at TeliaSonera, in a statement.
Huawei currently has 700 employees in the Nordic countries. Friberg estimated that the figure will increase by 10 to 20 percent over the next year.
“We have grown incredibly quickly here in the last few years. We have extensive recruitment going on now, both in Sweden and other Nordic countries,” he said.
“We have no clear commercial goals for the Nordic market, but we will continue to invest in it. Sweden is far ahead in terms of telecoms and is a strategically important market,” he added.
In Sweden, Huawei has three offices with about 350 employees working in research and development.
