Taiwan Mobile today tapped Nokia to be its exclusive vendor for 5G equipment and services in a three-year deal valued at about $450 million.

The agreement calls for Nokia to provide the operator with radio access network (RAN) equipment, a 5G core, and an integrated 5G IP multimedia subsystem (IMS). Initial activities are set to begin this week with the deployment of a non-standalone 5G network, and Taiwan Mobile intends to migrate to a 5G standalone network by mid 2023, according to Nokia. 

Taiwan Mobile and Nokia will collaborate to integrate specialized 5G use cases on its network for e-commerce, stadiums, health care, and manufacturing, according to Jamie Lin, president at Taiwan Mobile.

Nokia is the incumbent RAN vendor for Taiwan Mobile, having previously provided equipment and services for the operator going back to its 2G mobile network. While the Finnish vendor had the upper hand in expanding its business relationship for 5G, it’s a positive development for Nokia after it effectively abandoned the China 5G RAN market in April. 

The People’s Republic of China officially views Taiwan as a breakaway province that it vows to reclaim, but Taiwan’s leaders maintain it is a sovereign state.

Nokia will also supply Taiwan Mobile with Nokia Software for network management, including design, deployment, and technical support services. Network functions and applications will be deployed by Taiwan Mobile on Nokia’s CloudBand Infrastructure Software and Application Manager and Network Director cloud management products, according to the vendor. 

Meanwhile, for its 5G standalone core, Taiwan Mobile is preparing to deploy unified data management, signaling, and network functions, including user plane, session management, policy control, and network slicing provided by Nokia’s Cloud Packet Core portfolio.

Taiwan Mobile paid $1 billion to license 60 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band and 200 megahertz of spectrum in the 28 GHz band following the country’s auction earlier this year. It plans to deploy 4,000 base stations this year.

Chunghwa Telecom, the largest mobile network operator in Taiwan, previously tapped Ericsson and Nokia to provide 5G RAN equipment. The country’s third operator, Far EasTone, went exclusively with Ericsson for its 5G network. All three of Taiwan’s mobile network operators now plan to launch commercial non-standalone 5G service by the end of this week.