Earlier this month, when ZTE had received only an interim reprieve from the US ban on its sourcing US-made components, the Chinese firm appeared to have been dropped from a contract to modernize the RAN for Wind Tre, Italy’s recently merged third MNO.
Ericsson said it had won a €700m deal to modernize Wind Tre’s network instead. But last week, ZTE finalized a compromise deal with the USA and returned to normal operations, after a period when it thought it would not be able to continue with most of its businesses, since it procures so many of its components from US vendors.
ZTE insisted it was back in business in Italy, as elsewhere, and was picking up the Wind Tre deal again. It even said it had been about halfway through the modernization when it had to take an enforced hiatus, but would now take back some aspects of the project from Ericsson.
Ericsson did not comment, but ZTE claimed the Swedish firm would be left with some of the project, but only worth about 55% of what had been announced (so about €350m). Ericsson’s media relations team hinted that this figure, reported in the Italian media, was about right, and pointed out that it had won the entirety of Wind Tre’s core network upgrade contract.
It remains to be seen whether ZTE really does just step back into the deal, and which aspects will remain with Ericsson. But one lesson the saga must have taught Wind Tre, and many other operators, is the danger of single-sourcing any major network deployment.