Bell Canada and Nokia expand 5G partnership to accelerate innovation with Cloud and Open RAN deployment

• Expanded partnership to modernize Bell's network with Cloud and Open RAN capabilities, improving agility, scalability, and efficiency
• Partnership aims to deliver enhanced customer experiences and drive innovation in Bell's 5G network through a flexible, open architecture
• Partnership to leverage Nokia's AirScale portfolio on a Red Hat OpenShift and Dell Technologies platform to build an open, intelligent, and autonomous network

MONTRÉAL and ESPOO, Finland, Feb. 25, 2025 /CNW/ - Bell Canada and Nokia today announced a significant expansion of their 5G network infrastructure partnership, marking a major step forward in deploying Cloud RAN and paving the way for future Open RAN advancements.

Bell's deployment of Cloud RAN infrastructure is a strategic stepping stone toward Bell's broader Open RAN vision. Nokia's anyRAN approach offers Bell flexible RAN evolution options – purpose-built, hybrid, or Cloud RAN solutions – enabling network monetization, interoperability, vendor diversity, and reduced vendor lock-in.

Nokia's cutting-edge Cloud RAN solution, coupled with Bell's forward-thinking Open RAN vision, promises unparalleled network agility, scalability, and efficiency, ultimately delivering an exceptional customer experience and positioning Bell at the forefront of the 5G evolution.

Key features of the expanded partnership

This multi-year contract extension will see Bell deploy Nokia's commercial Cloud RAN solution, built on a foundation of Red Hat OpenShift and supported by Dell Technologies infrastructure. Nokia will supply equipment from its industry-leading, energy-efficient 5G AirScale portfolio to support Bell's Cloud RAN deployments, ensuring feature and performance consistency throughout the network evolution.

This collaboration leverages the power of Cloud RAN to deliver immediate benefits to Bell's network. The cloud-native architecture, powered by Red Hat OpenShift, provides enhanced scalability and agility, enabling Bell to rapidly adapt its network to meet fluctuating customer demands and swiftly introduce new services. This agility is further enhanced by the deployment of Dell PowerEdge servers at cell sites and data centres, providing the processing power and reliability needed for demanding 5G workloads.

Nokia's contribution includes its Cloud RAN software and Open fronthaul hardware capable radios. Nokia will also supply its AI-powered radio network management solution, MantaRay NM, which supports all radio and mobile core technologies, optimizing network performance and efficiency. 

Quotes

"Our expanded partnership with Nokia represents a pivotal moment in Bell's 5G journey. By leveraging Nokia's cutting-edge Cloud RAN technology, we're not only significantly enhancing our network capabilities today, but also building a robust foundation for the future adoption of Open RAN. This approach ensures network agility, scalability, and vendor diversity, ultimately delivering an exceptional experience for our customers and positioning Bell as a leader in 5G innovation."

-       Mark McDonald, Senior Vice President, Networks, Bell

"This important contract extension with our partner, Bell, highlights the strength of our industry-leading RAN technology portfolio and our anyRAN approach that enables gradual RAN evolution with feature and performance consistency. We are proud to support Bell on their cloud journey, which will bring the readiness and scalability to enable new use cases and drive new revenue models for 5G monetization."

-       Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks, Nokia

"As a leader in the telecom industry, Bell continues to push the boundaries of innovation by successfully leveraging Red Hat OpenShift as the cloud platform for 5G. Expanding this platform to evolve RAN functions further drives flexibility, scalability and cost efficiencies. Red Hat is proud to collaborate with Bell and Nokia on this exciting initiative to deliver the benefits of cloud-native technology to customers across Canada."

-       Gino Grano, Global Vice President, Americas, Telecommunications, Red Hat

"Bell's network cloud transformation, supported by our collaboration with Nokia and Red Hat, provides a flexible and scalable foundation designed to drive business growth, with agility to quickly embrace new market opportunities."

-       Dennis Hoffman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Telecom Systems Business, Dell Technologies

About Bell

Bell is Canada's largest communications company¹, providing advanced broadband Internet, wireless, TV, media and business communication services. Founded in Montréal in 1880, Bell is wholly owned by BCE Inc. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca or BCE.ca.

Through Bell for Better, we are investing to create a better today and a better tomorrow by supporting the social and economic prosperity of our communities. This includes the Bell Let's Talk initiative, which promotes Canadian mental health with national awareness and anti-stigma campaigns like Bell Let's Talk Day and significant Bell funding of community care and access, research and workplace leadership initiatives throughout the country. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca/LetsTalk.

About Nokia  

At Nokia, we create technology that helps the world act together.  

As a B2B technology innovation leader, we are pioneering networks that sense, think and act by leveraging our work across mobile, fixed and cloud networks. In addition, we create value with intellectual property and long-term research, led by the award-winning Nokia Bell Labs, which is celebrating 100 years of innovation. 

With truly open architectures that seamlessly integrate into any ecosystem, our high-performance networks create new opportunities for monetization and scale. Service providers, enterprises and partners worldwide trust Nokia to deliver secure, reliable and sustainable networks today – and work with us to create the digital services and applications of the future. 

Media inquiries:
Bell
[email protected] 

Nokia
[email protected]

Investor inquiries:
Richard Bengian
[email protected]

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¹ Based on total revenue and total combined customer connections.

SOURCE Bell Canada (MTL)