Nokia struck an agreement with southeast European telecoms and media business United Group to become its sole core vendor in Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia, with plans to deploy cloud-based services on 3G, 4G and eventually 5G networks.

The Finnish vendor issued a statement explaining the agreement expanded its business relationship with United Group and involves a host of core products including cloud packet, voice, 3G and cloud infrastructure.

Nokia stated this will provide operators “the speed intelligence and security to deliver 5G services”.

This will include eventually providing network slicing and managing the networks with “near zero-touch automation and adhering to service level agreements”.

Core strength
Nokia boasted 25 of the top 40 communications service providers rely on its core products. For United Group, deployments will initially cover 3G and 4G networks on the cloud, beginning in the current quarter, before moving on to non-standalone and standalone 5G.

United Group is active in eight countries, with approximately 11 million users across southeast Europe. In 2020, it boosted its holdings in the region with the acquisition of Vivacom in Bulgaria.

The agreement with Nokia also builds on a deal struck earlier this year for the vendor to provide a fibre network and in-home mesh Wi-Fi across all eight countries.

United Group CTO Zeljko Batistic explained a surge in connected devices and demands of mobile users now required “a powerful wireless network that can transfer large volumes of data fast, securely and with very low latency”.