Nokia SVP pieces together the key trends in European networks

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Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (00:07):
Hi, Tony Poulos here at Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona. I have me today Matthieu Bourguignon, who is the Senior Vice President of Network Infrastructures Europe at Nokia. Matthieu, welcome back again this year.

Matthieu Bourguignon, Nokia (00:22):
Hello Tony.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (00:24):
Listen, what do you see as the trends that are happening in the European market? What's different to what was happening last year?

Matthieu Bourguignon, Nokia (00:31):
I'm not sure that there is so many difference, but what we can say on the consumer market is that a lot of service providers have launched 5G with a certain good level of success, but we see that they're struggling a bit to find a way to monetize those 5G. So bottom line, they're obliged to launch a kind of price war. And the good news for Nokia also is that there is an opportunity to get additional RQ on the fixed network. So we see some of them deciding to move FTTH network to one gig, to 10 gig and possibly to 25 gig. And this is something that is available in Nokia technology today.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (01:09):
So what about the enterprise? What's happening in the enterprise market? I know this has been increasingly important for Nokia.

Matthieu Bourguignon, Nokia (01:15):
Yeah, yeah, this is super important because as you know, we have a very strong diversification strategy. So we have a strong base with our existing service provider, but we have decided for years to diversify in the enterprise market and also with new players like very per scalers and the cloud majors. And in enterprise, what is interesting in Europe is that we see what we could call the cloud repatriation. So in fact, in the past, all the enterprise used to have their workloads and their activity with the hyperscalers. Now they have understood that to have a better cost control and also for security and sovereignty reasons, they would like to have maybe this application that are a bit critical being in their company or someone in a data center that is in Europe. So this is very good for us because the more you have data centers everywhere, the more we can sell Nokia solutions in the data center. And the more you can connect data center and you know that this is what we want to do.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (02:14):
For Nokia of course, the CSPs are still very important though, aren't they?

Matthieu Bourguignon, Nokia (02:18):
Yeah, they're super important. They're representing still a significant part of our business. And by the way, we have a lot of activity and innovation with them. So I talk for example about the FTTH. So we are moving from one gig to 10 gig and we can do 25. We have also demonstrated a hundred gig with EL ERV year in Finland, in fixed network also and in optics. We have acquired recently fin error that is helping us to have a larger scale on the market and we will have now a significant position in US, but also worldwide, probably number one with one of our biggest competitor, which is extremely important. And as you know, in optics and in ip, some questions now on the quantum security. So typically some customers now ask us to provide a quantum safe networks, and this is something that is available today in Nokia.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (03:15):
In the media, I see a lot of focus on data centers. Why is this?

Matthieu Bourguignon, Nokia (03:20):
Yeah, so we are talking a lot about data centers and about ai. Also, AI has been also a buzzword in Mobile World Congress for years in Nokia. We've been doing AI for years for development of our product and also to bring these solutions for operations of networks. So back to data center. In fact, data center, we have really something that is unique on the market because if you take a data center, now we can propose four things. We propose the data center fabric, so the leaf and spine solution to connect the racks together. We propose the super spine that is the data center gateway, that is more or less at the main door of a data center. We can propose data center interconnection. So when you have two data center, you can connect with WDM, and this is where we can provide a quantum protection and we can do now with fin and data center connection because sometimes when you have a lot of racks, they're connected with a lot of fiber, and now you can use WDM solutions to connect this system. So typically this is an area where we want to go. And recently at the board of Nokia, we have decided to increase significantly the level of investment to reach 1 billion additional revenue in the next five years based on this kind of solution that we can, by the way, sell to enterprise cloud majors and service providers.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (04:42):
So AI is driving a lot of new business.

Matthieu Bourguignon, Nokia (04:44):
Of course.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (04:45):
Matthieu, it's been wonderful talking to you again. Thank you so much.

Matthieu Bourguignon, Nokia (04:48):
Thank you, Tony.

Please note that video transcripts are provided for reference only – content may vary from the published video or contain inaccuracies.

Matthieu Bourguignon, SVP, Network Infrastructure, Europe, Nokia

Nokia’s network infrastructure guru in Europe, Matthieu Bourguignon, has an intimate knowledge of market trends in Europe. AI, FTTH, enterprise, CSPs and data centres are all factored into his responses.

Recorded: March 2025

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