Telco Vendors Must Deepen Ecosystem Ties to Make Tactical 5G a Defense Reality

While campus connectivity has proven to be a tough nut to crack for horizontally-organized telco network infrastructure vendors, Nokia and Ericsson are now pivoting toward mission-critical enterprise connectivity. Both Ericsson and Nokia have intensified their engagements in the defense industry: Nokia launched Nokia Federal Solutions in 2024 and simultaneously acquired the Fenix Group, a provider of secure tactical private wireless solutions for defense, while Ericsson established the Ericsson Federal Technologies Group (EFTG), a dedicated division for selling services and equipment to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Military communications have historically relied on proprietary, purpose-built radio systems like TETRA, SATCOM, and HF/VHF radio, which have become expensive to maintain, slow to update, and increasingly outpaced by commercially available tech. This is becoming particularly prevalent, as important security loopholes were identified in legacy technology systems (think about the security loopholes identified in TETRA radio systems in 2025), which increased the need to upgrade aged systems and modernize communication infrastructure.

Pair this with the increased investments in defense and military equipment, because of the outbreak of a growing number of violent geopolitical conflicts, and militaries are now actively looking beyond traditional radio suppliers and toward commercial-grade cellular, transport, and cloud-native networking solutions, creating a major opening for telco vendors. To do so successfully, it is important, however, to have a detailed understanding of the defense industry, potential use cases of cellular technology, and current bottlenecks to address them efficiently.

Against this backdrop, 5G presents a qualitatively different proposition. It is the first commercial wireless standard capable of simultaneously delivering the high bandwidth required for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) data offload, the low latency required for autonomous vehicle control and command and control applications, and the device density required for large-scale sensor network deployments within a single physical connectivity infrastructure. Critically, it relies on Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) hardware, which is significantly more cost competitive than custom military equipment. Because of its capabilities and customizability, 5G communication is actively considered particularly for autonomous systems, distributed sensing, and data-intensive decision-making at the edge.

Recent geopolitical conflicts have served as a Proof of Concept (PoC) here—showing both the opportunities and complexities that using a commercially available communication technology for military operations can bring. Commercial cellular networks and consumer devices have been used at scale for troop coordination, intelligence collection, and tactical information exchange in a live high-intensity conflict. Furthermore, it has also shed light on important limitations from relying on commercially available connectivity technologies—without any additional safeguarding. Some Russian drones have been found carrying Ukrainian Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs), exploiting local network coverage to bypass protections that Ukrainian operators had put in place for foreign-registered devices. Starlink's role in the conflict has illustrated both the power and the limits of commercially-sourced connectivity. Rapid deployment of a robust wireless connectivity technology has been a genuine advantage on the one hand, but vendor control over service availability has proven to be a strategic vulnerability that defense strategists would be reluctant to replicate at scale.

Reflecting this, 5G private networks are being evaluated for Command-and-Control (C2) connectivity, unmanned aerial and ground vehicle guidance, ISR data offload, logistics and asset tracking, maritime port and vessel communications, and as a replacement for aging TETRA land mobile radio infrastructure. Integrating 5G with satellite backhaul is also under active research, with the goal of providing seamless connectivity across fixed bases, transit corridors, and forward deployment sites.

One of the most pressing bottlenecks preventing the adoption of 5G for the defense sector is the absence of a unified alliance-wide profile. Across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), for example, each member state is currently implementing 5G against national specifications. The resulting fragmented landscape carries two main implications. From a demand perspective, the multitude of incompatible configurations undermines interoperability and, therefore, limits the use cases and the impact of cellular connectivity on alliance-wide military operations. From a supply side, the existence of multiple national profiles prevents infrastructure vendors from achieving the economies of scale necessary to drive down unit costs and accelerate deployment timelines.

Therefore, it is in the interest of telco infrastructure vendors to drive standardization within military alliances like NATO that are adopting cellular technology for military and defense use cases. By working closely with NATO standardization entities to translate military use cases into technical specifications, contributing reference architectures and profile requirements, advocating defense-relevant capabilities within global bodies such as The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and GSMA, and actively participating in alliance-wide interoperability trials, vendors can drive convergence on common standards, reassure decision makers of 5G’s robustness for military operations, and accelerate adoption across defense and other mission-critical sectors.

At the same time, the telco infrastructure vendors will also need to build a durable ecosystem partnership and Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy to learn the right lessons from previous enterprise cellular endeavors. From a messaging point of view, this means they should position 5G as a key enabler for military applications (like kill-chain, C2, or ISR use cases). To do this successfully, telco infrastructure vendors will need to expand on existing partnerships with defense manufacturers (Nokia with Lockheed Martin, for example) to develop a durable GTM and ecosystem partnership strategy. This should focus on the following three pillars:

1. Demonstrate Coexistence with Existing Tactical Communications: Telco infrastructure vendors need to understand that implementing militaries and defense companies will not replace all their existing communications infrastructure with (private) cellular network. Instead, it will coexist with other technologies like tactical radio systems, Satellite Communications (SatCom), legacy Narrowband (NB) communications, fixed network infrastructure, and ad hoc battlefield networking technologies. As a first step, infrastructure vendors will need a thorough understanding of these use cases and technologies to determine: a) under what circumstances interoperability is required/desired; and b) what level of interoperability will be needed.
2. Package 5G in Mission Modules: Based on the insights from the first phase, infrastructure vendors should then design “mission modules”/solutions around specific use cases and military applications. These should focus on delivering specific outcomes and will, therefore, need to be designed in close collaboration with defense manufacturers and specialized system integrators to combine the Radio Access Network (RAN) and core with edge computing & Artificial Intelligence (AI) inferencing, devices, sensors and cameras, pre-integrated applications, and security & compliance profiles. Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) will need to center around concrete military outcomes instead of abstract technology Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
3. Build a Named “Defense Partner Program”: To complement the technology bundling element and the existing efforts of infrastructure vendors to foster sales with their dedicated business units (e.g., Nokia with Nokia Federal Solutions and Ericsson with its Mission Critical Networks and Defense unit), they should also create a formal defense ecosystem partner program to execute a unified commercial strategy. This program will define a key list of commercial targets, ranging from large defense manufacturers, over specialized system integrators to implementing military defense units. This partnership network can then be used to co-develop validated 5G modules for tactical edge networking, vehicle connectivity, ISR backhaul, base protection, and multi-domain C2. Furthermore, partners can be given access to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), deployment kits, ruggedized configs, and integration support.