By Supantha Mukherjee

Finnish telecoms equipment maker Nokia Oyj said on Monday it has won a 5G contract worth about 400 million euros ($449.48 million) from Taiwan Mobile to build out the telecom operator's next-generation network as the sole supplier.

A supplier to Taiwan Mobile's earlier networks, Nokia will prepare for the deployment this month and complete the migration to 5G standalone within a three-year period.

Nokia, along with Nordic rival Ericsson, has picked up most of the 5G contracts in Taiwan.

While Nokia also won 5G contracts from Taiwan Star https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/05/18/nokia-selected-by-taiwan-star-telecom-as-5g-network-provider and Chunghwa https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/03/18/nokia-secures-5g-contract-with-chunghwa-telecom Telecom, Ericsson picked up the deal with Far Eas Tone https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2020/3/far-eastone-selects-ericsson-for-5g#:~:text=Ericsson%20(NASDAQ%3A%20ERIC)%20has,Access%20Network%20(RAN)%20vendor.&text=FET%20expects%20the%20first%20commercial,during%20summer%202020%20in%20Taiwan and a part of the contract from Chunghwa.

To offset hurdles faced last year, the Finnish telecom operator has been scripting a turnaround by diversifying its chipset supply and grabbing 5G deals. Earlier this month, Nokia picked up 5G contracts from Canada's Bell Canada and Telus Corp, along with an order from a Singapore telecom operator.

However, Nokia did not win any 5G radio contracts from Chinese telecom companies - China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom - in recent bidding rounds, excluding a part of China Unicom's 5G core network contract.

Huawei [HWT.UL], ZTE and Ericsson got all the 5G radio contracts from the three top vendors in China.

($1 = 0.8899 euros)

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)