Nokia Corporation NOK recently announced that Outer Reach Broadband, a leading Internet service provider in rural Maine, has opted to deploy its state-of-the-art fiber network infrastructure. This collaborative effort aims to optimize Outer Reach Broadband’s multi-gigabit services, delivering 10 Gbps symmetrical broadband to homes and businesses, enabling it to bridge the digital divide and foster local economic development.

Digging Deep Into NOK-Outer Reach Broadband Deal

Nokia’s comprehensive offering for Outer Reach Broadband includes its Altiplano Access Controller, a cloud-native platform for visualizing, managing and optimizing fixed access services. The platform’s modern cloud-native architecture enables easy customization and seamless expansion with AI-driven analytics and Machine Learning diagnostics. It supports 10G XGS-PON technology and offers a complete suite of network management and automation functions and easy navigation via a customizable graphical user interface to help streamline network management, improve scalability and ensure the long-term reliability of its infrastructure. 

To further augment its networking capabilities, Outer Reach Broadband has implemented Nokia’s portfolio of Wi-Fi 6 beacons. Equipped with EasyMesh technology, these mesh networking devices support Wi-Fi 6 technology, delivering robust, reliable whole-home coverage with intelligent channel selection. Moreover, Nokia’s Corteca software will be integrated to optimize and manage Wi-Fi performance in the home, enabling Communication Service Providers to improve customer experience, reduce costs and unlock new revenue streams.

Does NOK Stand to Gain From the Deployment?

With the emergence of the smartphone market and subsequent usage of multi-gigabit fiber broadband, user demand for coverage speed and quality has increased in recent times. Further, to maintain superior performance as traffic increases, there is also a continuous need for network tuning and optimization. Nokia is poised to benefit from copper and fiber deployments of passive optical networking. Its expertise in mission-critical networks is well-established, with deployments across more than 2,600 leading enterprise customers in the transportation, energy, manufacturing, webscale and public sector segments worldwide.

This collaboration with Outer Reach Broadband is likely to propel the stock with incremental revenue generation and inducement of similar deals from other carriers in the future. The deal is also expected to strengthen Nokia’s position as a leading telecommunications equipment provider in the region.

NOK’s Stock Price Performance

Shares of Nokia have gained 42.7% over the past year compared with the industry's growth of 42%.

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NOK’s Zacks Rank and Key Picks

Nokia currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). 

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader industry have been discussed below.

InterDigital IDCC sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

In the trailing four quarters, it delivered an earnings surprise of 158.41%. It is a pioneer in advanced mobile technologies that enable wireless communications and capabilities. The company designs and develops a wide range of advanced technology solutions used in digital cellular, wireless 3G, 4G and IEEE 802-related products and networks.

Celestica Inc. CLS carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. The company provides competitive manufacturing technology and service solutions for printed circuit assembly and system assembly, as well as post-manufacturing support to many of the world's leading original equipment manufacturers.

Arista Networks, Inc. ANET, carrying a Zacks Rank of 2 at present, supplies products to a prestigious set of customers, including Fortune 500 global companies in markets such as cloud titans, enterprises, financials and specialty cloud service providers.

Arista delivered a trailing four-quarter average earnings surprise of 12.87%. It has a long-term growth expectation of 14.41%.

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