The two companies have agreed a multi-million-pound contract to deploy products and solutions from the Ericsson Radio System portfolio in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Additional service upgrades and small cell solutions are included as part of the network modernisation which will see VMO2 customers in major UK cities benefit from enhanced mobile capacity, improved coverage and faster speeds.
Katherine Ainley, CEO, Ericsson UK and Ireland, says: “Ericsson is at the forefront of high-performance and energy-efficient 5G networks, and this new agreement is another important milestone on our journey together with Virgin Media O2 to bring the very best in next generation connectivity to key locations across the UK.
“As end-to-end partner on both Radio and Core we are building a network of the future that will not only offer superior connectivity for Virgin Media O2 customers but also deliver an innovation platform that can help to transform new industries and pave the way to a more connected digital society.”
The latest generation of Ericsson quad-technology baseband, multiband and 5G Massive MIMO radio AIR 3258 will be deployed across the network, bringing enhanced 5G performance to users and increased energy efficiency of the network.
A reduction of up to 30% in energy use is anticipated in comparison to the previous generation of radio.
As part of the agreement, VMO2 could also become one of the first communications service providers (CSPs) in Europe to trial Ericsson’s Cloud RAN solution, offering a seamless evolution to cloud-native technologies and open network architecture.
