Summary

• Ericsson will supply Cellnex Poland with radios, RAN compute, microwave backhaul, antennas, enclosures, and site-energy systems.
• The project includes Ericsson’s first large-scale Transport Automation Controller deployment for microwave backhaul and the first Polish deployment of its AIR 3229 dual-band radio.
• Cellnex is trying to increase capacity and network density while reducing tower load, physical footprint, and energy consumption at individual sites.

Poland’s next phase of 5G expansion is reaching beyond radios into the physical and operational machinery underneath them, with Cellnex Poland selecting Ericsson for a network overhaul spanning antennas, compute, microwave links, site power, and automated backhaul management.

Cellnex has chosen Ericsson as one of the suppliers for the modernisation and expansion of its Polish radio access network, which supports connectivity delivered to end users by Polkomtel under the Plus brand. The companies have not disclosed the contract value, number of sites, or deployment timetable.

The equipment package includes radios, RAN compute modules, microwave links, antennas, enclosures, and energy infrastructure. Ericsson says newer equipment will reduce physical footprint and tower load while improving energy performance compared with previous generations, giving Cellnex a way to add network capacity without simply piling more hardware onto existing sites.

That engineering constraint becomes more important as mobile networks densify. Additional spectrum bands, antennas, radios, power equipment, and transmission capacity all compete for space and structural loading on towers that may have been designed before current 5G configurations were envisaged.

Backhaul is becoming more automated

One of the more distinctive elements of the Polish deployment sits behind the radio network itself. Cellnex will become Ericsson’s lead customer for the high-power MINI-LINK 6356 E-band microwave radio and will carry out what Ericsson describes as the first large-scale deployment of its Transport Automation Controller for microwave backhaul.

Backhaul connects individual radio sites into the wider telecommunications network, so adding faster access equipment achieves relatively little if the links behind those radios become congested or difficult to operate. Microwave remains particularly useful where laying additional fibre is expensive, slow, or impractical, including at distributed rural and tower locations.

Automating that layer gives operators another route to manage growing network complexity. Ericsson says its controller uses AI-driven automation for the microwave network, although the practical value will depend on how much configuration, optimisation, fault handling, and capacity management Cellnex can move away from manual engineering without losing operational visibility.

The project also introduces Ericsson’s AIR 3229 dual-band TDD Massive MIMO radio in Poland. The unit combines C-band and 2600MHz TDD capability within one piece of equipment, reducing the need for separate radio units and therefore limiting some of the physical burden on the tower.

Energy and tower load shape network economics

Although mobile-network marketing tends to focus on coverage and speed, the economics of a nationwide radio network depend heavily on thousands of individual sites. Each has power requirements, leases, maintenance work, structural limits, transmission links, and equipment that has to survive years of weather while remaining accessible to engineers.

Replacing several older components with more integrated hardware can therefore change operating costs as well as performance. Cellnex is also taking Ericsson’s Energy & Enclosure platform, which combines power systems, energy storage, and physical enclosures as part of the site architecture.

Energy efficiency is not simply an environmental metric for operators because radio infrastructure runs continuously and electricity expenditure scales across large networks. Newer equipment can reduce consumption per unit of carried traffic, although total network electricity use does not necessarily fall if customers continue consuming substantially more data and operators keep adding capacity.

Poland’s telecommunications sector generated PLN46 billion in revenue during 2025, according to regulator UKE, up 3.5% on the previous year. The regulator describes the mobile market as moving beyond a model centred principally on individual subscribers towards communications infrastructure supporting wider economic digitalisation, increasing the importance of the networks beneath enterprise and public digital services.

Shared infrastructure changes where investment lands

Cellnex’s role also makes the project different from a conventional mobile-operator equipment refresh. Tower companies own or manage infrastructure that can be used to support networks on behalf of operators, shifting parts of the capital and operational burden away from the consumer-facing telecoms brand.

In Poland, Cellnex’s active infrastructure arrangement supports Plus, while the latest Ericsson contract extends modernisation through several layers of that network. The result is a supply chain in which the customer buying mobile service, the operator providing it, the infrastructure company running parts of the network, and the equipment manufacturer can all be separate organisations.

That separation can make shared infrastructure economically attractive, but it also increases the importance of interfaces and long-term supplier management. Equipment upgrades have to work with spectrum strategy, existing sites, operator requirements, transmission systems, power availability, software, and maintenance arrangements rather than being treated as standalone hardware purchases.

Ericsson also has an established Polish industrial footprint, including around 2,000 research and development engineers in Kraków and Łódź and European equipment production in Tczew with manufacturing partner Flex. The contract therefore lands inside a European telecommunications market where resilience and the location of supply chains have acquired greater strategic weight alongside ordinary network economics.

The Cellnex deployment will ultimately be judged less by the number of new product names attached to it than by whether those components allow the Polish network to carry more traffic without proportionately increasing site complexity, power consumption, and physical equipment. As 5G matures, squeezing more useful capacity from each tower is becoming as consequential as erecting another one.