TIM Brasil dropped Ericsson for Huawei and Nokia in its 5G network reshuffle
After 3G, 4G and first-phase 5G with Ericsson, TIM's bidding picked Huawei and Nokia to cut total cost of ownership — antennas are 60% of its network costs.
What was changed
In mid-2024, TIM — Brazil's third-largest mobile carrier — awarded its new 5G mobile access network contracts to Huawei and Nokia, passing over longstanding supplier Ericsson. Ericsson had been in TIM's vendor list since 3G, supplied the 4G rollout and the first 5G phase, and had its contract renewed in 2023, with Ericsson covering São Paulo, the midwest and the north and Huawei the Rio coast, the south and the northeast. 'The two vendors that won the bidding process were Huawei and Nokia. We will continue our future development with these two players,' CTO Marco di Costanzo said.
The stated logic was quality plus productivity. Antennas represent around 60% of TIM's network costs once capex, opex and tower-leasing fees are counted, so vendor choice is the carrier's biggest total-cost-of-ownership lever, and the reshuffle aimed to keep TIM within its 2024 capex guidance of 4.5 billion reais (US$796 million). Ericsson was not expelled: it remains installed in several cities and continues providing quality of service where its equipment stands.
The new vendors brought new hardware. Huawei developed an exclusive antenna for TIM that the operator says increases capacity by 50% and coverage by 30% — which TIM claimed would make it the world's first carrier to go live with such a solution, with rollout beginning in the following months. TIM already claimed Brazil's broadest 5G coverage — 60% of the urban population — and, per regulator Anatel, led the country with 8,479 deployed 5G sites.
The loss stung Ericsson in one of its largest Latin American markets: in Q2 2024 its Europe and Latin America revenues dipped 2% year on year to 15.6 billion Swedish kronor (US$1.5 billion), and CEO Börje Ekholm flagged sharply increased competition from Chinese vendors in the region. In the same restructuring of its technology spend, TIM also named Google its main partner for generative AI: 100 use cases mapped, 10 prioritised, with network maintenance and call centers — both major cost lines — already in deployment and genAI running with 100% of its internal agents.
Why it worked
Antennas dominate network cost, so the vendor roster is the single largest TCO decision a carrier makes.
A competitive re-bidding reset pricing power that two decades of incumbency had handed to Ericsson.
Exclusive hardware turned a procurement decision into differentiation: a custom antenna competitors could not buy.
Generation-by-generation incumbency had made Ericsson the default; the reshuffle made every future contract contestable.
What can be applied
When one input is 60% of your cost base, rotating its suppliers is a strategy decision, not procurement — and the bidding tension an incumbent quietly erodes is worth real money.
Aftermath
The antenna rollout was expected to begin in the months after the announcement, with TIM staying within its 4.5bn-reais capex guidance for 2024. Ericsson kept serving installed sites. TIM separately advanced its genAI deployments with Google into network maintenance and customer support.