Investing.com — Shares of U.S.-listed Nokia Corp ADR (NYSE:) rose more than 3% in premarket trading on Wednesday following a statement from T-Mobile US Inc (NASDAQ:) backing an analyst’s claim countered that it could drop Finnish shares. company.
Nokia shares fell about 7% on Tuesday after EJL Wireless Research’s Earl Lum suggested in a LinkedIn post that T-Mobile could replace Nokia (HE:) with Swedish rival Ericsson.
“We have not made a decision to end our working relationship with Nokia, and any media reports implying this are untrue,” T-Mobile clarified in its response.
Lum’s post criticized Nokia for not meeting T-Mobile’s network requirements, suggesting Ericsson’s products were superior.
“T-Mobile is working with both Nokia and Ericsson on our RAN, who over the years have helped us build the largest and fastest 5G network in the country,” T-Mobile said.
In his message, Lum said Nokia may be “on the losing side in the battle with its Swedish competitor” at T-Mobile USA.
Nearly a year ago, EJL Wireless Research LLC broke the news of Nokia’s replacement by rival Ericsson (BS:) at AT&T (NYSE:) Wireless.
Nokia’s technical issues, including power consumption and cooling needs for its massive MIMO radios with multiple inputs and outputs – a key cog in modern wireless communications, are among the major sticking points.
Unlike its competitors, the majority of Nokia’s current Osprey 64T and Habrok 64T use massive MIMO units for T-Mobile USA fans for cooling.
“ALL of Nokia’s competitors have managed to design the same massive MIMO radios with the same MIMO configuration (32T/64T), with the same RF output power, with the same IBW/OBW and with the same weight but WITHOUT fans,” said Lum. noted.
“We believe there is not a single mobile operator on earth that wants an active cooling solution (i.e. fans) on their massive 1+ kW MIMO radios,” he said.
Nokia’s string of failures to deliver solutions that T-Mobile USA wanted dates back to 2011, Lum wrote, when the company failed to keep up with rival Ericsson.
Ericsson launched its first generation semi-active antenna integrated radio or AIR product. But Nokia’s equivalent solutions either came to the market late or were not widely deployed by T-Mobile.
“Nokia’s equivalent solutions came to market too late or were not widely deployed by T-Mobile,” Lum said in the post.
Yasin Ebrahim contributed to this report.
