Nokia today said China Mobile awarded a multi-vendor deal to build an integrated IP/optical transport network for a 13-city metro area and two provincial backbone networks. And Nokia got the largest share of the deal at 50 percent. Nokia could not comment on the other vendors involved. And China Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The new network will enable China Mobile to better support data center interconnect, broadband services, and 4G services and backhaul. It will also lay the foundation for 5G. The service provider has already begun deploying the new network.

Nokia is providing its 1830 PSS-24x for the packet/optical transport network multilayer switching platform.

Nokia’s work in China is accomplished through its joint venture Nokia Shanghai Bell.

Today’s news is the third announcement this year between Nokia and China Mobile. At Mobile World Congress in February, Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said that he had just signed a 5G deal with China Mobile. The operator will use Nokia’s 5G Future X network architecture to offer services to vertical markets.

In March, Nokia said China Mobile is continuing to use its Nuage Networks software-defined networking (SDN) platform to expand its public and private enterprise cloud offering. During the past two years, Nokia Shanghai Bell has deployed Nuage’s SDN platform in 10 data centers. The largest deployment contains more than 1,000 servers.