Nokia secured a €250 million loan from the Nordic Investment Bank (NIB), which the vendor will use to finance research and development on 5G related activities in Europe over the next two years.

The agreement with NIB follows a similar €500 million loan arrangement between Nokia and the European Investment Bank in August, also earmarked to support its 5G efforts in Europe.

Nokia said in a statement the loan from NIB will finance its 5G activities between 2018 and 2020, with a focus on “developing new 5G-related end-to-end product offerings for different business areas”.

The company said its 5G R&D programme also focuses heavily on the implementation of IoT, with work being done to ensure a range of different devices, for example home applicances, vehicles and other electronics, are able to exchange data wirelessly.

Kristian Pullola, CFO at Nokia said NIB shares its “view of the revolutionary nature of 5G”.

“This financing will further support 5G research and development in Europe and it bolsters the momentum we have already seen this year as the era of 5G begins,” he added.

Pressure builds
Indeed, the pressure is on European vendors to make strides in 5G, in light of competition from China-based Huawei.

Neil McRae, MD and chief architect at BT said last month at Huawei’s Mobile Broadband Forum that the Chinese vendor was the “world’s one true 5G supplier” and rivals needed to catch up.

Developed countries in Europe are expected to launch commercial 5G networks in 2019, just behind the US and Asian powerhouses Japan, China and South Korea, where operators claimed to have turned on the world’s first commercial 5G services based on 3GPP standards on 1 December.