Nokia has announced a $30 million investment to expand its advanced semiconductor packaging facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, creating over 500 new jobs in engineering, manufacturing, and research and development. The expansion will increase production capacity of critical photonic chips up to 10 times at the Allentown site, with new capacity scheduled to become commercially available by the end of the third quarter. The project is supported by $14 million in state aid from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and $10 million in federal CHIPS Act tax credits, anchoring Nokia's broader $4 billion multi-year commitment to US network connectivity. According to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the expansion will generate an economic impact exceeding $500 million over the next five years, with the state intentionally targeting investments to make its business climate more competitive globally.
Nokia and Google Cloud have officially launched their expanded partnership, integrating Google's Gemini AI models into Nokia's network software suite. According to the latest announcement, this strategic collaboration is designed to help telecom operators automate operations, reduce costs and resolve network issues faster. The partnership addresses the challenges faced by modern networks that generate increasingly complex volumes of data, with traditional management relying on manual troubleshooting that struggles to keep up with escalating alerts. As reported by the collaboration announcement, the Gemini-powered agents will help telecom providers move beyond manual operations to maximize performance, ensure reliability, and find new efficiencies within their data infrastructure. "The AI era demands a new kind of network—one that is programmable, AI-native, and able to operate at machine speed," said Vivek Jaiswal, senior vice president, Autonomous Networks at Nokia. "With Gemini-powered agents integrated into Nokia's automation portfolio, we're helping telecom providers move beyond manual operations to maximize performance, ensure reliability, and find new efficiencies within their data."
Under the expanded collaboration framework, Nokia has introduced six specialized AI agents powered by Gemini models into its Nokia Assurance Center platform. The router and event triage agents are already fully functional and will be available as a SaaS model on the Google Cloud Marketplace in September 2026. Operators will be able to deploy this initial starter pack of certified agents immediately to work with the Nokia Assurance Center. Nokia will deliver the remaining, more complex agents through rolling software updates beginning in late 2026 and continuing throughout 2027, expanding capabilities across Nokia's broader network portfolio including Unified Inventory, Data Suite, and Orchestration applications. "Agentic AI marks a fundamental shift in how telecommunications networks are managed, moving operators away from rigid templates to dynamic, goal-oriented automation," said Sridhar Gollapudi, Global Telco Market Lead at Google Cloud. "By applying Gemini's multimodal reasoning capabilities to complex data streams, this partnership helps operators to transition from manual workflows to a self-driving posture that lowers costs and optimizes resources globally."
In Vietnam, Nokia is actively participating in the AI-RAN Alliance, which integrates AI into cellular networks to automatically optimize data speeds, frequencies, and energy efficiency directly at the base stations. Viettel is actively collaborating within this ecosystem, and Nokia — as a leading member of the alliance — supports these initiatives. The company has also formed a deep-tech partnership with NVIDIA on AI RAN innovation, investing to make its radio software stack run natively on NVIDIA's accelerated computing platform. According to Mr. Hiro Miura, General Director of Nokia Vietnam, "We have entered the AI era, and our technology investment now centers on it. In Vietnam, this shift shapes not only mobile networks and 5G deployment, but also our core infrastructure portfolio—optical networks, IP networks, and fixed networks, which are now Nokia's main pillars." The AI cycle has begun, with infrastructure spending expected to grow substantially beyond radio networks to include heavy infrastructure such as subsea cables and cross-border connectivity, where operators like Viettel, VNPT, and Mobifone are already building robust infrastructure. "AI RAN architecture has three components: AI for RAN, AI on RAN, and AI and RAN," explains the latest development. "AI for RAN is a mature technology available today — our Self-Optimized Network (SON) solution already uses AI to maximize spectral efficiency and automate network design for operators such as Viettel, VNPT, and Mobifone. AI on RAN and AI and RAN form our deeper integration with NVIDIA; we are advancing through this phase and are on schedule to bring these capabilities to market in the near future."
Vietnam's 5G launch has aligned with Nokia's decision to establish high-tech manufacturing in Bac Giang Province, where the company manufactures baseband units, remote radio heads, and fiber network equipment. Today, all 5G equipment delivered to Vietnamese operators is made locally as a choice for supply chain diversity and resilience. Going forward, Nokia's roadmap is for 5G equipment serving the wider Asian market to be exported from its Vietnamese manufacturing base. "Vietnam's 5G launch came at the right time for us, aligning with our decision to establish high-tech manufacturing in Bac Giang Province," noted Mr. Miura. The company also implements specialized telecom security through its Cybersecurity Dome, delivering tailored protection for telecom networks, and builds hardware as quantum-safe network with post-quantum encryption embedded to safeguard against future cryptographic vulnerabilities.
As Vietnamese operators move toward 5G Standalone (5G SA), which unlocks capabilities such as network slicing, Nokia is working with them on proven monetization frameworks for the B2B segment. The company is also preparing for 6G standardization, with the 6G study in 3GPP Release 20 due to conclude in March 2027, followed by implementation specifications in Release 21 expected around the end of 2028. A key requirement will be new mid-band spectrum, particularly the 6–8 GHz range, which balances coverage and capacity. Vietnam has made strong progress by reserving 700 MHz in the upper 6 GHz range for IMT communications at the end of 2025. On research, Nokia contributes to national programs such as XGMF in Japan, the 6G Bharat Alliance in India, and the 6G Forum in Korea, alongside bilateral collaborations with operators and universities, ensuring Vietnam maintains a proactive spectrum and frequency strategy with the Ministry of Information and Communications and the Ministry of Science and Technology.
