Leading telecoms group chooses Nokia and Ericsson for 5G network

PARIS: Orange, France’s biggest telecoms company, said it had chosen Nokia and Ericsson to deploy its 5G network in mainland France, as China’s Huawei Technologies faces intense political scrutiny in Europe.

“For Orange, the deployment of 5G represents a huge challenge and is one of the main priorities of our Engage 2025 strategic plan,” said Orange France CEO Fabienne Dulac.

“We are delighted to be pursuing our partnerships with both Nokia and Ericsson, two key long-term partners, in order to develop a powerful and innovative 5G network,” added Dulac.

Earlier this week, the European Union followed Britain’s example in allowing members to decide what part Huawei can play in its 5G telecoms networks and resisting pressure from Washington for an outright ban.

EU countries can either restrict or exclude high-risk 5G vendors such as Huawei from core parts of their telecoms networks, according to the new guidelines, which seek to address the cybersecurity risks to the bloc’s 28 countries at a national and EU level.

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5G is coming: what can we expect?

While previous cellular networks focused on mobile phones, 5G promotors say its greater transmission speed and total bandwidth will allow a ballooning number of objects such as traffic lights, crop equipment, refrigerators and other household appliances to send and receive data.

One of the biggest innovations that 5G is expected to enable are self-driving cars, because it can virtually eliminate latency — the time it takes to get a response to information sent over the network.