Virgin Media O2 UK Extends Nokia Deal for Faster 5G Mobile Kit
Mobile operator O2 (VMO2) has confirmed that they’ve signed a new 3-year extended supplier agreement with Nokia, which will see them continue deploying and upgrading their UK 5G network using Radio Access Network (RAN) equipment (Airscale) from the Finnish company – focused on delivering “increased reliability, performance, and capacity.”
The deal will cover 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G networks across Southern England, including London. As part of that, Nokia will supply Virgin Media O2 with their latest Habrok massive MIMO radios and AirScale Baseband and Interleaved Passive Active Antennas (IPAA), both powered by its ReefShark System-on-Chip (SoC) technology. The new kit isn’t just faster, but it also uses 30% less energy and provides a 40% reduction in weight and volume.
Nokia will also supply its Single RAN solution that enables one base station to run 5G, 4G, 3G, and 2G technologies simultaneously, which it’s hoped will help VMO2 to “accelerate its 5G coverage rollout“. The operator will also implement Nokia’s NetAct network management system for improved network monitoring and management.
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Finally, the announcement hints that VMO2 may be planning to pilot Nokia’s commercial intelligent controller to demonstrate advanced 5G use cases, and they may also pilot the company’s new 5G Cloud RAN technology in the future.
Jeanie York, CTO of VMO2, said:
“We continue to invest in our network upgrading and expanding our 4G and 5G networks to customers across the country. This is delivering superior connected experiences and supporting the UK’s digital transformation that will drive long-term growth. Continuing our partnership with Nokia will help us to deliver even better 5G with higher speeds and lower latency, as well as ensuring we are set up for future growth in line with our customers’ ever-evolving demands and needs.”
The broad goal above appears to be to deliver improved 5G coverage and “enhanced performance” to O2 customers, which is most welcome since the operator has developed a nasty habit of trailing rivals EE (BT), Vodafone and Three UK in many benchmarks of mobile broadband performance and availability.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« EE UK Boosts 4G Mobile Broadband Capacity in Wimbledon
London Bridge could sorely do with the boost, among other busy areas.
o2 entire UK network is in need of a boost 😉
O2 is overall very good inside the M25 especially indoors. Doesn’t stop the EE posters insisting they are great despite being hopeless inside buildings.
Long awaited, especially as the other networks push forwards in their developments
Cornerstone Vodafone-managed site by me now broadcasting 5G but not for O2! Maybe one day!
Vm02 have quite simply the worst speeds and congestion of any of the mnos. Vm02 have too many huge mvnos using their network. All networks of course do this but vm02 have went completely overboard. Tesco mobile, giffgaff, sky mobile, migrating virgin customers onto their network and finally o2s own customer base. 5into1 does not go
The only saving grace for vm02 is roaming is included
Utter nonsense as usual.
It wasn’t O2 that stopped working at Winter Wonderland last year, it was EE.
This site has a ridiculous EE bias from certain posters, imagine being so in love with a private company that you can’t say it do anything wrong. The reality is that to this day EE is hopeless indoors.
Interesting 3G is mentioned, it would imply O2 have no intention of turning it off soon like other networks.
Does anyone here know if Three and Vodafone ate going to use new NOKIA kit? I read somewhere that the Ericsson kit has problems.
*are
I don’t believe so for now, though time will tell
Doesn’t matter what O2 do, you’ll have the usual people saying they are rubbish. This site and others have a massive pro EE bias.
In the M25 O2 are by far and away the most consistent network indoors, with EE miles and miles behind. Where people actually use their phones EE to this day are hopeless in so many places. Useless having 300Mb if as soon as I go inside it goes to no service. O3 have a massive small cell network which helps massively with this.
But like I said, I will get ignored and the post about EE having small cells at Wimbledon will get all the excitement despite O2 having done that three years ago.
Yeah, because people will choose to ignore what’s actually true EE here by far, at least on 3G and 4G have bad signal it’s only on 4G they have “good” signal whilst Vodafone lacks any 5G coverage at all.
I meant to say 5G for bad signal, my mistake 4G on EE is the only network type that would be viable to use.
For pretty much every other network, minus Vodafone’s missing 5G coverage everything is “good” to excellent coverage.
Looks like you’re wrong about the Wimbledon article! 0 replies!
And what if I chose EE exactly because I don’t care about indoors (where I have WiFi and WiFi calling?) but I care about where I actually use my phone, which is when I’m out and about?
I agree with you with the fact that EE has a bias, but hey, what did you expect from a MNO hogging more than half of the spectrum and nobody even realises that it is the most uncompetitive thing ever? o2 has the best deployment probably of small cells in central London, yet everytime I use my o2 SIM I regret topping up because it’s totally stuck and they have network policies that put you on their B40 TDD even when there’s huge congestion, so much that actually goes faster if you lock a 1+3+20 CA.
@x_term that’s fair enough, I respect your POV.
Every time I use EE I regret it because I remember how poor they are indoors, I spend a lot of time in old buildings, pubs etc and EE are always poor indoors. Vodafone do fine but O2 normally have a small cell outdoors.
For me personally, I have always preferred slower speeds but better coverage. EE prioritises fast speeds + worse coverage indoors, which is fine. But people claim O2 doesn’t have a strategy at all when they clearly do, it is designed to keep you connected – and that is a legitimate strategy but the pro-EE lot just poo on every other network.
Vodafone is the network I recommend to most people, I think they have by far the best balance, O2 I recommend strongly inside the M25.