Ericsson and Nokia strengthen cooperation to accelerate towards Autonomous Networks

Cairo ,25 ,March ,2026:

Ericsson and Nokia announce a landmark collaboration aimed at significantly advancing intelligent automation across purpose-built, cloud RAN, and Open RAN networks.

Under the collaboration, Ericsson will become a member of Nokia’s SMO Marketplace, which is designed to empower Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and partners to build, integrate, and deploy automation applications within an open, multivendor ecosystem.
Nokia will also be a member of the Ericsson rApp Ecosystem, the open, well-established ecosystem of CSPs, vendors and independent developers built around the Ericsson Intelligent Automation Platform, Ericsson’s network management and automation platform for open, multivendor and multi-technology networks.

The mutual ecosystem membership reflects Ericsson and Nokia’s and shared focus on championing Autonomous Networks, with a particular focus on innovation centred around the R1 interface through which rApps interact with the SMO. Shared efforts such as this are essential for bringing AI and automation into mobile networks to transform deployment, optimization and operations workflows as CSPs globally seek to achieve and surpass Level 4 autonomy.

This collaboration between Ericsson and Nokia will enhance cross-industry development and will lead to more seamless adoption and integration of automation tools across diverse multivendor environments. Through the collaboration, both companies will make rApps available to CSPs on both platforms.

“The telecoms industry is converging on SMO as the long-term automation architecture, with major RAN and SMO contributors, and CSPs, working together to drive this transition through standards-based collaboration. Participation in each other’s rApp ecosystem reflects shared confidence from Ericsson and Nokia in the SMO architecture and a common commitment to advancing industry-wide interoperability through standardized R1 interfaces. The collaboration will expand access to, availability of, and interoperability between the growing number of rApps coming to market for CSPs,” commented Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Research Director, ABI Research.

“This collaboration is a key step forward for the telecoms industry,” says Anders Vestergren, Head of Solution Area Network Management at Ericsson, “giving CSPs greater choice and flexibility as they execute their Autonomous Network transformation strategies. The agreement between Nokia and Ericsson shows genuine progress in the ongoing and already-productive effort to encourage innovation using the R1 interface, and cultivate diverse, engaged and dynamic rApp ecosystems working together to embed this essential area of telecoms technology in networks worldwide.”

“This partnership with Ericsson marks a pivotal advancement in how the industry delivers the next generation of autonomous networks,” said Ari Kynaslahti, CTO at Nokia. “By aligning on open frameworks and intelligent operational models, we are giving service providers a more adaptive and future-proof foundation for automation. This collaboration also accelerates the evolution of robust rApp environments that will enable operators to introduce new capabilities faster, optimize their networks with greater precision, and scale innovation across diverse deployment scenarios worldwide.”
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