Vodafone Romania has awarded Ericsson a six-year 5G RAN contract.

The agreement will see Ericsson support Vodafone's 5G network deployment across the country, plus improve the operator's existing mobile network infrastructure.

Vodafone is yet to launch 5G in the market, but previously spent €122.5 million ($132m) during a spectrum auction in 2022, and piloted a service back in 2019.

“In support of a digital society, building a future-ready, secure, energy-efficient network is crucial," said Nicolae Vîlceanu, chief network officer at Vodafone Romania.

"The partnership with Ericsson gives us the technological fundamentals in our endeavor to stand alone 5G networks with tremendous impact for our customers: residential users, companies, and authorities, in terms of speed, low latency, diversity of use cases.

"It is also helping us upgrade existing RAN infrastructure in order to provide fast, reliable services in the transition to standalone 5G and harness our potential as a services innovator for the digital, green society we envision."

Ericsson said it will provide Vodafone with its latest radios and antennas for its rollout.