Bezeq Israeli Telecommunication Co. Ltd. (TASE: BEZQ) has chosen Nokia as its main supplier for its fiber-optic project. "Globes" has learned that last week Nokia was selected after a tender in which five companies participated.
It is not clear what will happen at the later stages of the project, but if past experience is any guide, Bezeq will almost certainly introduce an additional supplier for the project. The investment at this stage is not believed to be especially high - not more than a few hundred millions shekels.
Nokia will supply the solution for the GPON (global gigabit passive optical network) system that Bezeq will roll out within a few months. GPON is the leading technology among most of the world's telecommunications carriers for high-speed Internet over fiber-optic cable. In Israel, IBC is the only carrier that uses this technology at present. Partner Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTNR; TASE: PTNR), which uses a different technology (P2P) also intends to adopt it shortly as a supplement.
GPON will save Bezeq thousands of telecommunications cabinets that it currently uses. Bezeq will gradually switch to using just a few hundred sites, and once it phases out copper cable altogether, the cabinets will also disappear.
Nokia is Bezeq's current supplier for VDSL+ technology, and is responsible for about one third of the company's communications cabinets. Bezeq's main supplier for Internet transmission over copper cable is Adtran, which will probably compete in later stages for a slice of the GPON cake.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 30, 2020
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