- Reports are making the rounds once again that the U.S. might want to buy Nokia and/or Ericsson
- In an interview with Fierce, Nokia’s U.S. government affairs officer didn’t comment on that idea
- But the Nokia executive stressed Nokia’s deep American ties
With former Intel and HPE exec Justin Hotard, Nokia’s getting a new CEO that hails from the United States. Could the Finnish company also get a new investor in the form of the U.S. government? That concept is making the rounds again.
Brian Hendricks, Nokia’s U.S.-based chief policy and government affairs officer, wisely declined to comment on that idea during a wide-ranging interview with Fierce. But he acknowledged it’s something that’s been floating around since the first Trump administration. And he made a point to stress the company's American bona fides.
If you look at Nokia’s DNA, “we are heavily American,” he said. “I would argue that we’re the most American Finnish company you’ll ever find.”
Of course, he’s referring to companies that Nokia acquired over the years, including Alcatel-Lucent and assets from Motorola Solutions, as well as Bell Labs, which is based in New Jersey. More recently, it added Fenix Group in Virginia to the fold and it’s in the process of closing the acquisition of California-based Infinera. In addition, Nokia established a manufacturing plant in Wisconsin to make products for use in the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.
“This is a critical market for us, and we're heavily leaning into the American connectivity experience,” Hendricks said. “We, of course, are a trusted supplier to the U.S. and the U.S. government sees us that way, so we're quite content to soldier on and continue to bring all this connectivity to America.”
About 30 years ago, Hendricks’ first real post-graduate school job was at Ameritech, one of the Baby Bells that emerged with the breakup of the Bell System. So he’s well versed in telecom public policy – and knows how to respond to hot-potato questions without getting anyone in trouble.
Hot potato
Case in point: Nokia was an early champion for Citizens Broadband Radio Services (CBRS), a unique three-tiered 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band that is often used for private networks in the U.S. It's also the subject of fierce debate.
On the one hand, Nokia has done quite well for itself in the private networking space. Based on revenues, Nokia was the No. 1 private wireless Radio Access Network (RAN) supplier outside of China for the first three quarters of 2024, according to Dell’Oro Group analyst Stefan Pongratz. (For the record, Huawei is No. 1 worldwide in private wireless, with Ericsson and ZTE in the No. 3 and 4 positions, respectively.)
Most of Nokia's U.S. private network deployments use CBRS spectrum, either unlicensed General Authorized Access (GAA) or Priority Access Licenses (PALs).
But historically, a good chunk of Nokia's revenue came from mobile carriers, which aren't keen on the shared spectrum model. The biggest U.S. wireless carriers prefer larger geographic licensed areas for their own exclusive use. In other words, not the shared spectrum paradigm that is CBRS.
Now, the FCC is considering modifications to the CBRS framework, and the mobile carriers themselves have differing views on how it should move forward. Verizon bought CBRS licenses and uses it in stadiums and places where it needs more capacity, but AT&T doesn’t use CBRS nearly as much and went so far as to suggest the FCC move the entire CBRS band from its current 3.5 GHz location to the lower 3 GHz portion of the band.
So, what does Nokia think of AT&T’s proposal?
“To be honest, I think we're still looking at possible options there, what alternatives there are, keeping in mind, you already have a well-developed ecosystem, a lot of deployments already out there,” Hendricks said.
Spectrum pipeline: Stat
Beyond that, it’s of utmost importance for the U.S. to get a predictable spectrum pipeline in place, both to keep spectrum prices at a “rational” level and for planning and deployment purposes, he said.
He and other wireless industry leaders are hopeful the Trump 2.0 administration will come up with some spectrum solutions and restore the FCC’s auction authority, which it has been lacking the past few years.
“There’s still time. If we get a bill passed, we get spectrum auction authority restored [and] we have a pipeline. The U.S. can make up ground very, very quickly. It’s a very sophisticated market,” he said.
That said, success is somewhat time-sensitive.
“If we don’t do something in the next year, then you will start to see, once again, it’s going to be a mad scramble to catch up with some of the other markets and it will be very expensive to deploy again,” he concluded. “We need the deployment to be based on economic and technological rationality, as opposed to deploying whatever is available and hope that the market evolves the way we want it to. I think the U.S. did OK in 5G, but it could have done much better.”