Huawei has beaten out Ericsson in a tender for Swedish operator Net4mobility’s national 4G network.
Net4mobility is a JV between Norwegian incumbent Telenor and Swedish operator Tele2. Both parties said that Huawei snared the deal because of its competitive prices.
“It has been a long procurement process in which we discussed both technology and price before settling on Huawei. All actors in this process are strong on technology and have comparable offers. But we opted for Huawei because they met with all of our important parameters,” Tele 2 Sweden CEO Niclas Palmstierna said.
Net4mobility is planning to roll out a 4G mobile network to 99% of the population by 2013. Construction on the project is set to start next year in the major Swedish cities.
The Net4Mobility rollout represents the first nationwide 4G network in Sweden. The deployment also includes a 30%-50%increase in the number of GSM base stations for voice traffic, with enhanced indoor and outdoor coverage
across the country.
The loss on its home territory is a blow to Ericsson in its tense tussle with Huawei over LTE contracts.
“We went as low as we possibly could in price during the negotiations but it wasn't enough,” said the president of Ericsson in the Nordic and Baltic regions, Mikael Bäckström.
The news comes days after the highly publicized launch of the world’s first LTE networks by TeliaSonera, with an Ericsson-supplied network in Sweden and with Huawei kit in Oslo. The vendors are competing against each other to win TeliaSonera’s global LTE tender.
Meanwhile Ericsson has secured the sole contract for Norway’s third 3G network for new operator Mobile Norway.
Network Norway, CEO Arild Hustad said "it has been a tough selection process since the choice of system and equipment partner is crucial to meet the expectations we have for this network. For this reason, Ericsson was the clear partner of choice, since they met all of our terms of quality, functionality and implementation capability.”
The new carrier aims to provide 75% of the population with 3G network coverage. Mobile Norway is owned jointly by Network Norway and Tele2.