Nokia’s broadband business boosted as pandemic pressures networks

Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia is seeing a pick up in orders as its broadband clients race to upgrade networks to meet higher user demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, a company executive said.

Many customers had planned to grow their network by 30% to 40% over the next few years assuming a similar growth in traffic, but COVID-19 brought in that traffic growth overnight, Sandy Motley, Nokia’s President of Fixed Networks, told Reuters.

“Customers will need to accelerate the growth that they had planned in the future, and we’ve seen customers already talking to us about that,” she said, adding orders for fixed networks were up 22% in the first quarter.