Nokia scored a five-year deal to provide AT&T with 5G network equipment in support of the carrier’s recently acquired C-Band spectrum. The move is a significant boost for the Nordic vendor that is looking to turnaround its operations.

The deal will see Nokia provide access to its C-Band portfolio that includes 5G standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) equipment, cloud-based, and open radio access network (RAN) products. The vendor noted that this equipment will “interwork” with existing Nokia 4G LTE RAN equipment already deployed on AT&T’s network. This aligns with the deal’s targeted deployment to “parts” of AT&T’s network and traditional deployment models where a carrier assigns a vendor to geographic sections of its network.

The agreement was not much of a shock as Nokia has been an integral network partner for AT&T for two decades. Carriers typically partner with at least three major vendors as part of their nationwide network deployments.

However, the optics are especially important for Nokia as the vendor has had a rough 12 months.

It lost a significant amount of business with Verizon last year, when it was replaced by rival Samsung as part of the carrier’s 5G plans. And it welcomed in a new CEO late last year in Pekka Lundmark who has pushed hard on the vendor’s three-year turnaround plan.

Nokia over the past 2 years had also shed around 11,000 jobs, and this week said it will cut up to another 10,000 jobs by year end. The vendor is expected to add more color to its plans as part of an investor day conference this week.

AT&T acquired access to licenses for 80 megahertz of mid-band spectrum in the recent C-Band auction for $23.4 billion. The carrier last week said it plans to begin deploying about 40 megahertz of those holdings by the end of 2021.

Capex for those activities in 2021 were already included in this year’s capex guidance of $18 billion, the company said, but it expects to increase annual capex by a cumulative $6 billion to $8 billion from 2022 to 2024 to deploy its mid-band 5G network.

That investment is significant for AT&T’s 5G plans as carrier executives admitted that its mid-band 5G strategy pales in comparison to rivals T-Mobile US and Verizon.

“We are the third-place player in wireless,” AT&T Communications CEO Jeff McElfresh said during the operator’s recent analyst event. “I want to be very transparent with that. We find ourselves not as the share leader, and it has been many years since we’ve actually grown our wireless premium postpaid business.”

More broadly, AT&T committed to expand its millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G network to 17 venues by the end of 2021, bringing its total footprint in that category to 40 locations. The operator’s mmWave network will also be deployed at an additional 7 airports and at least 30 company-owned stores.

AT&T’s low-band 5G network currently covers 230 million U.S. residents in 14,000 cities and its mmWave 5G network is available in parts of 38 U.S. cities.