Improving lives
Technology connects us to the people we love, to our work and studies, and the critical services we need.
Connectivity and digitalization enable us to collaborate and innovate, engage with our communities and families, and make our industries more productive and efficient. They allow us to learn and work together. The solutions we provide can help resolve many of the social and economic challenges facing the world today, bringing more inclusive access to opportunity, basic social services and enabling human rights, and restoring falling productivity through digitalization of industry and society, beyond the planetary and climate positive impacts. The social handprint of the technology we provide far outweighs the potential social footprint.
Connecting people and things
We believe the positive impact of the technology we create far outweighs any potential negative impacts. The positive handprint of connectivity and digitalization on society and people is much greater than the potential negative footprint which we work hard to minimize. Connectivity enables people to interact, communicate, collaborate, share, learn and work. It provides access to services, work, healthcare, education and opportunity. It makes life and work easier, more productive and sustainable.

How do we get learning on track for the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
Digital inclusion in education is universally important as it forms the bedrock of future societies and economies. By providing educational establishments with broadband connectivity, devices and digital skills, countries are literally investing in their own future. In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, digital technologies, 5G connectivity and immersive learning tools such as AR and VR will be foundational to the future of education and learning & development.

5G and sustainability
5G will provide the fabric for a better world. We offer a broad innovative portfolio of solutions to underpin a more digital and sustainable world. 5G will deliver many things, from instant data, access and experiences to more efficient, productive and sustainable industry. Above all, it will be the great enabler, improving lives and creating a safer, more sustainable society. 5G provides the foundation for more productive, sustainable and prosperous society. It will underpin and bring together the power of Artificial Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Blockchain and other new technologies and enable smarter working and living.

How 5G transforms our lives
We see 5G transforming our lives in fundamental ways. For example, in healthcare 5G can help save lives as the foundation of modern healthcare service. High-resolution video consultations, assistance robots and smart wearables all help to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of treatments. To ease living and working, 5G coverage in cities and rural areas alike can allow everyone access to equal opportunities from their homes. On the road, we can make journeys safer and more efficient with 5G car connectivity, enabling vehicles to connect to each other, the infrastructure, network services, and other road users such as cyclists and pedestrians.
Read more about the extraordinary opportunities and high impact use cases of 5G
We have 251 commercial 5G deals and 83 live 5G operator networks
Find out where we are rolling out 5G with our customers
Broadband
The broadband network is vital for social and economic wellbeing, for the sustainability of our planet, and to unlock the promises of Industry 4.0, IoT, and future waves of innovation. Broadband enables seamless in-home connectivity making remote working and accessing remote services possible for everyone, at any time. It enables new market opportunities amongst consumers, businesses, and enterprises via SDAN, virtualization, slicing, and automation.
Fiber broadband networks help people to live, work and play from home in times of crisis and whenever they need to. Fiber to the Home continues to help address the digital divide. Fiber broadband is also seen as a more climate friendly connectivity option for the new hybrid working life.
Sustainable industry
The 4th industrial revolution (4IR) is already underway, bringing changes to energy, transportation, healthcare, communications, production and manufacturing. Intelligence, automation, sustainability and more are being rolled out through robust mission-critical solutions. In the energy and resources industries we see safer, more efficient and less wasteful operations thanks to digital automation. Employing intuitive, intelligent and more responsive solutions, utilities are able to improve delivery, efficiency and accuracy of their services with more sustainable use of resources. With 5G enabled smart factories, manufacturing is more productive, less wasteful, and more adaptable, while supply chains are more transparent too.
5G readiness report
The transition to 5G is expected to be unlike any previous development in mobile communications. The order of magnitude improvement 5G will generate in data transmission will support a wide range of innovative technologies and business transformation needs.
Businesses with greater 5G maturity have been shown to better be able to maintain productivity and increase customer engagement in the challenging climate created by COVID-19.
The Big Inversion
The gap between physical industries and their digital counterparts may be wide, but we believe that it can be bridged with 5G+ technologies; the essential infrastructure that merges enterprise ICT and industrial OT, and, as the “plus” in 5G+ implies, extends well beyond 5G network infrastructure.
Physical industries are now on the brink of making major ICT investments over the next decade. Each industry will optimize the use of 5G+ technologies to digitally augment themselves to realize new safety, productivity and efficiency benefits at faster speeds and scale. Read more on what is 5G+ and its future role.
Networks built for Industry 4.0 digitalization
Sustainability is key to building back better. Fueled by Industry 4.0 goals of efficiency, productivity and agility, digitalization brings new ways to connect our society and workplaces, it helps companies make the shift toward more sustainable business practices, offers tools to measure impact, and helps to bridge digital divides. We work with heavy asset industries such as manufacturing, mining, energy, and transportation to operate more effectively, and meet both business and sustainability goals.
Read more about the unlocking of Industry 4.0
Read more about why insights and analytics need a good network
Industry pathways to net zero
The manufacturing, energy and utilities, transportation and buildings sectors account for 80% of the total global CO2 emissions. Switching to renewable energy will not be enough for these industries to reach net zero by 2050. More ambitious, wide-reaching action is needed.
GSMA Intelligence and Nokia produced a whitepaper “Industry pathways to net zero” to demonstrate how mobile and digital technologies will allow businesses to meet their decarbonization targets quicker. For example, in the manufacturing industry, by moving to smart factories, leveraging IoT devices and automating labor intensive tasks, the research suggests potential annual productivity and energy savings gains of 10-20% by 2030.
Explore
The solutions we provide are transforming enterprise networks, enabling industries where humans and machines will connect in ever more intelligent ways.

Manufacturing, supply chain and logistics
Digitalizing your supply chain and logistics operations or bringing intelligence to your factories, our solutions bring new levels of safety, visibility, and productivity

Energy and resources
Whether mining, oil and gas or power utilities our mission critical networks bring automation, intelligence and a more sustainable future

Transportation
Comprehensive communications solutions enable automation, improved asset management through Industrial IoT and unbeatable connectivity for the transportation

Public sector
Our ultra-broadband networks transform how way cities and countries live, advance, protect, care and thrive and how people live better lives

More industries
Our solutions and technologies help for example finance, healthcare, retail and automotive enterprises ensure a fast, profitable and sustainable digital transformation
Digital inclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic showed the importance of connectivity, but also highlighted a growing digital divide – underscoring the importance of digital inclusion and the urgency to resolve the digital divide has been brought into greater focus. According to the ITU’s Facts and Figures 2021 report, in 2021 as internet uptake accelerated as a result of the pandemic, 4.9 billion people had internet connectivity, which is 63 percent of the population. Some 2.9 billion people remained offline, 96 percent of whom live in developing countries. Roughly 40 percent of the world’s total population remains offline.
Our President and CEO Pekka Lundmark is a UN Broadband Commissioner. We support the 2025 targets set by the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development that aims to ‘connect the other half’ in the next five years, calling for national broadband plans that address affordability, access and digital skill levels by region, demographic and gender. It also calls to connect small businesses and extend e-finance services to the unbanked. Read more about the UN Broadband commission

Read more about how we work to promote digital inclusion:
Recent news
Innovation and sustainability
Our long-standing commitment to innovation enables our customers to deliver extraordinary, transformative experiences. Working alongside our customers across industries and around the world, we are building future technologies to make Industry 4.0 a reality and enhance almost every aspect of life.
Nokia Bell Labs conducts disruptive research to solve the needs of future humans
The industrial research arm of Nokia, Nokia Bell Labs, is world-renowned for its profound influence on the evolution of communications and information technologies and consequently how people connect, collaborate, compute and communicate. Fundamental research underpins Nokia Bell Labs’ mission to innovate the technologies and make the discoveries that improve human existence.
The flying horticulturist:
Find out how Nokia Bell Labs AI and drones are helping AeroFarms revolutionize vertical farming out 5G with our customers
NGP Capital – investment in game-changing growth companies
NGP Capital is a partner owned, independent venture firm with Nokia as its sole investor. The fund is part of Nokia’s broader innovation initiatives, providing insight and expanding into new, complementary markets and ecosystems to our core business. This activity works in tandem with our internal disruptive research and incubation initiatives, including Nokia Bell Labs.
Nokia commits $400m to NGP Capital for investments in game-changing growth companies. The fund focuses on companies developing emerging 5G use cases for industrial and business transformation. Selected companies will be assessed on key ESG metrics, to support progress from an environmental, social and governance perspective.
Social programs
Our corporate social responsibility approach and programs as well as our volunteering guidelines help us build a best-in-class approach to community investment that has a real impact on people’s lives, engages our employees and is related to our strategy and vision. Our activities are divided into corporate, key regional, and local programs. We support programs around the topics of climate & environment, digital inclusion & access to opportunity, inclusion & diversity, disaster relief, and university research. We work with our customers, NGOs and other key stakeholders to make the change happen.
862 900
people benefited from our community investment programs in 2021.
1.5 million
We target to improve the lives of 1.5 million through social digitalization projects, digital skill building, and connecting the unconnected or underserved between 2022-2025.
Key community programs
Acting together to improve opportunities in technology for underrepresented communities
Nokia launched a scholarship support program aimed at providing greater opportunities for underrepresented communities in the technology industry. Working together with digital talent transformation platform Udacity and the Blacks in Technology Foundation (BiT Foundation), the initiative offers more than 300 tech scholarships, with a focus on underrepresented students and career changers.
During the application period of August – September 2021 we received nearly 26,000 applications. After pre-selection, we invited prospective candidates to take part in a 2-month challenge course which acted as an introductory program. Based on the motivation and learning shown during the challenge course, we finally made the selection of 302 scholarship winners who started their Nanodegrees in January 2022 and will complete them by June 2022.
26 000
We received nearly 26 000 applications
302
Nanodegree scholarships awarded

© UNICEF Morocco 2022
Empowering youth in Morocco
In 2021 we launched a new two-year program in Morocco where we are joined by UNICEF, the Moroccan government (the Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of Education), Orange Morocco and other key partners to work to empower less advantaged young people (15-24 years), particularly girls, to become resilient young people who engage actively with their families and communities and are increasingly productive through employment or self-employment.
Through awareness raising sessions, workshops/bootcamps and coaching the program equips young people with skills for life and employment and helps them to identify problems and design social and entrepreneurial solutions in their own communities. The program is also designed to raise the youth's awareness on climate change and environmental issues, so that they can become change agents in their communities. The program is based on the UPSHIFT social innovation and venture curriculum, which is featured as part of the World Bank’s Solutions for Youth Employment portfolio.
Connecting the unconnected to inclusive digital learning in Kenya
Between 2018-2020 we worked with UNICEF Finland and UNICEF Kenya to build a multi-partner collaboration to bring internet connectivity and inclusive digital learning to Kenyan schools in rural and disadvantaged urban areas across the country. The program particularly focuses on girls and children with disabilities.
The first 10 schools across Kenya were successfully connected in late 2020 using Nokia Fixed Wireless Access solution in collaboration with local Mobile Operators. The solution connects more children in a fast and efficient way with high-speed and high-capacity broadband needed for remote digital education.
Moving from a CSR pilot to commercial rollout, we have together with UNICEF and Safaricom connected 90 primary schools to the Internet across Kenya during 2021. Read more about the scaling up of Kenyan school connectivity here.
Read more about student stories and earlier achievements of the program.

Watch the video with highlights from the program journey:
The shared value partnership aimed to showcase possible connectivity solutions and the benefits for children and teachers to be able to access quality digital content. The program was scalable due to the Government’s commitment on the Digital Literacy Project which already distributed more than 1 million computer tablets in schools and the Government’s objective to connect all 40 000 schools of Kenya.
Key achievements 2018-2021
First schools connected and used by all 1363 students to access digital learning.Read more.
girls reached directly through the program
children with disabilities benefited from the program
children in total reached directly through the program
Teachers trained in the use of digital materials, out of which 290 are female
more students connected to the internet as we connected a further 90 schools together with Safaricom and UNICEF in 2021
Program awards
Changing Lives Award
Nokia and UNICEF were recognised in May 2021 with the Changing Lives Award at East Africa Com. This award recognizes innovation where ICT meets socio-economic development and digital inclusion. The award celebrates a product, initiative or social enterprise that is having a life-changing impact on individuals or communities in East Africa.
WSIS 2021 Champions prize winner
The Nokia UNICEF shared value project was named in May 2021 as one of the WSIS Champions by the World Summit on Information Society forum. WSIS is a two-phase United Nations (UN) summit initiated (since 2003) to create an evolving multi-stakeholder platform aimed at addressing the issues raised by information and communication technologies (ICTs) through a structured and inclusive approach at the national, regional and international levels. The World Summit on the Information Society Forum 2021 represents the world's largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ community. The WSIS Forum is co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD.


Improving healthcare outcomes in Indonesia with UNICEF Improving healthcare outcomes in Indonesia with UNICEF
Between 2017-2021 Nokia provided support to UNICEF Indonesia through UNICEF Finland for a mobile health (mHealth) program across Indonesia that has provided tremendous results in terms of basic health vaccinations for children and pregnant mothers especially, as well as data analytics development and data gathering capacity for healthcare workers across a variety of issues – nutrition, polio, HIV, water & sanitation and malaria.
In the first phase of the program, UNICEF worked to adapt and deploy an SMS-based platform called RapidPro to expand access to immunization services for children living in urban slum areas. The intervention combines mobile-phone based caregiver–newborn pair registration; SMS reminders aligned to the immunization schedule; vaccine stock monitoring, and mini household surveys, called rapid card checks (RCC).

© UNICEF/UN0459214/Padj
Nokia’s support for UNICEF Indonesia has been seen as instrumental in the expansion of data-driven digital intervention programmes across Indonesia to improve results for children. The program helped establish a local data analytics team in 2019, which has been formalizing data innovations in the office and extending efforts more widely from health-related activities to child protection, education, water, sanitation and hygiene, and social policy. For example, data analytics were used to gather, for the first time, COVID-19 capacity and patient numbers across all public and private hospitals in Indonesia on a single dashboard, to monitor the effectiveness of remote schooling, and to track the availability of WASH services at health facilities and schools.
The program also supported the modernization and improvement of services in order to boost use and related outcomes. The interventions open two-way communication between government and community, build capacity to enable beneficiaries to use digital platforms, and strengthen workers’ capacity to deliver timely and quality services to improve health, nutrition, sanitation and hygiene at the community level.
With Nokia’s support, UNICEF in collaboration with the Indonesian government continued to develop and update the SDG (the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) Dashboard. The Dashboard provides an intuitive and innovative data portal to support analysis, informed policy choices and reporting on the UN goals at the central and subnational level in the country.
Read more about how we are connecting children to their right to healthcare in Indonesia, and also read more about earlier achievements of the program.
Key achievements
direct beneficiaries between 2017 and 2021
children reached using mobile technology
women reached using mobile technology
health workers trained to use the new technology to improve delivery of services during 2019-2021
government planning officers were trained to update and maintain the SDGs and Health Development Dashboards and use the data to inform planning and budgeting during 2019-2021
Nokia and UN Women collaborate to promote inclusion and diversity in Middle East and Africa
Nokia and UN Women have together launched four pilot projects to bolster inclusion and diversity for equality. These pilots aim to address four different areas such as increasing the number of women employees, raising awareness of cervical cancer and uterine fibroids, promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education, and empowering gender-based violence victims.
In 2021, we concluded a Nokia female program pilot supported by UN Women. This Converged Female Talent program was run in collaboration with the government of Saudi Arabia and our customer, Zain Saudi. The aim of the program was to create future technology solutions by women for women with social impact in a partnership set-up.
Read more about the UN Women program promoting inclusion and diversity

Social programs in India
We have long-term programs supporting communities in education, environment, inclusion and more as part of our India CSR programs.
Smartpur digital village ecosystem
Smartpur is a Nokia initiative aimed at integrating technology into the daily lives of people living in remote villages in India. The initiative connects people with essential pillars of development (education, health, livelihood, governance and financial inclusion).
The Smartpur digital village ecosystem has been designed keeping in mind its sustainability, scalability, replicability and large-scale impact. Using digital connectivity technology, the project intends to empower local entrepreneurs and provide them with facilities to provide services at the village level through Smartpur centres.
Nokia has partnered with Digital Empowerment Foundation and Save the Children India (Bal Raksha Bharat) to connect the unconnected in 260 villages across the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.

Remedial education
Nokia, in collaboration with Samridhdhi Trust has been working to help out-of-school children of migrant labourers through a bridge education program. The bridge program enrolls the out of school students from grade 1-5 to help them enter mainstream education. The curriculum is specially designed to cater to the needs of these students and is accompanied with assessments to judge whether students are prepared to enter mainstream schools.
The program's structure heavily relies on long-term impact. Most of the children participating in the program are first-generation students from low-income families.
They need assistance in order to continue their education once enrolled. As a result, the program has two parts – remedial bridge education to facilitate enrollment of out-of-school children from migrant families and support classes for the enrolled children to ensure no drop-out. Through this approach, the program aims to help the children overcome the barriers to entry into schools and mainstream them into age-appropriate classes.
COVID-19 support
Amid the COVID-19 crisis, Nokia supported affected households in Smartpur villages in partnership with Save the Children India (Bal Raksha Bharat) across 160 villages. Migrant populations were provided with essentials with the support of Samridhdhi Trust. Nokia also supported the State Disaster Management Authority of Tamil Nadu by contributing to their COVID relief corpus during their time of need.At this time, Nokia further supported hospitals with procuring medical equipment such as oxygen plants, Ventilators, ICU machines, PPE Kits, dialysis machines- all of which was essential to support the overburdened healthcare system of the country.
Also, Nokia in collaboration with Government of Karnataka established a modular COVID-19 field hospital with 90 beds at the SDS Tuberculosis Research Center and Rajiv Gandhi Institute Chest Disease Hospital in a record time of 26 days. This modular COVID-19 hospital can be moved and set up at any place in the event of any mass medical emergencies.
Read more about our CSR activities in India in our latest India CSR report
Social programs in China
Internet Classroom Program
More than 50 million rural students have no access to computers in China. Meanwhile, many obsolete computers are still in good condition and could be reused after appropriate refurbishment. Having cooperated with NGO Zhonggu since 2011, we have successfully set up 36 internet classrooms in 12 provinces and municipalities, including Yunnan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, Gansu, Shanghai, Beijing and Tibet. This is a star volunteering program of Nokia in China running for more than 10 years. By making use of the scrapped PCs donated by the company, and partnering up with a local NGO to reassemble the PCs into good condition, the program is intended to help bridge the digital divide and advocate environmental protection concept among Nokia employees across the country, by helping build up internet classrooms for the village schools in the remote areas and facilitate volunteers needs of Nokia employees in China. In 2021, 10 employee volunteers helped set up 2 internet classrooms for Minzu Primary School and Chengguan Primary School in Ninglang, Yunnan Province, with 100 PCs and gave lessons on digital technology to the children in the schools, benefiting over 3000 village students.
In addition to the internet classroom program, local employees engaged in a number of programs where they for example gave lessons to school children, organized inspirational sessions for Girls in ICT day, and supported a smart agriculture program.

Local community engagement
Our employees across our sites are active in organizing activities to support and engage with the communities around them. They carry out acts of kindness throughout the year through humanitarian and crisis aid projects, such as donating medical material and used IT equipment, collecting and donating toys, clothes and other essential goods.
Find below a few examples of activities in 2021
Krakow, Poland
The site organized a few volunteering events with over 100 hours of volunteering in total. The volunteers carried out cleaning and maintenance work at the St. Lazarus hospice in Kraków and the Ludwik and Anna Helclowie nursing home. During several visits to the Przytulisko animal shelter in Harbutowice the volunteers did some repair work, such as renovating dog kennels and house interiors.
Timisoara, Romania
The site carried out a number of programs during the year, including donating over one hundred used laptops to schools and taking part in a competition to build boats entirely out of recycled materials and race them on river Bega. Also, 40 Nokia volunteers planted over 900 trees in what they call the "Nokia forest", part of Timisoara's forest protection curtain.

Nokians competing in a boat made out of recycled materials. ©Daniela Stancioiu

Nokians competing in a boat made out of recycled materials. ©Daniela Stancioiu

Nokia volunteers planting trees in Timisoara, Romania
Helping hands
Launched in 2019, Helping hands, an application-based corporate community investment initiative addressed a number of local issues with the active participation of our employees. The employee-led programs focused on supporting on of our key themes at the time: Connecting the unconnected, Empowering women and Saving Lives. We saw a number of projects focus on promoting STEM and digital skills in engaging ways, be it through a club dedicated for the subject, or through direct engagement with schools to promote the inclusion of these topics in their syllabuses. We also had for example our experts in brand & marketing help a local NGO in combatting modern slavery, and saw our employees commit their time and efforts into re-building local schools and parks.
Covid-19 donations
Amidst the outbreak of the global pandemic, we set up a Global Donation fund to rapidly support our communities in need. Through the fund, we engaged with local branches of NGOs such as World Vision, UNICEF, Red Cross, and several local hospitals and clinics, in a total of 48 countries.
In India, Nokia supported affected households in Smartpur villages in partnership with Save the Children India (Bal Raksha Bharat) across 160 villages. Migrant populations were provided with essentials with the support of Samridhdhi Trust. Nokia also supported the State Disaster Management Authority of Tamil Nadu by contributing to their Covid relief corpus during their time of need.
At this time, Nokia further supported hospitals with procuring medical equipment such as oxygen plants, Ventilators, ICU machines, PPE Kits, dialysis machines- all of which was essential to support the overburdened healthcare system of the country.
Greenlight for girls
We worked together with international NGO greenlight for girls (g4g) over a number of years. The g4g days are all about showing girls that anything is possible, through interactive workshops held by g4g at Nokia locations around the world, where employee volunteers joined as mentors. By end of 2019, our collaboration with g4g had reached a total of 4964 girls around the world.
Long-term collaboration brings long-term benefits to children in Myanmar
The 5 year collaboration between Nokia and Save the Children produced two major projects, “The Best Start” project from 2015 to 2017 and the “Making Change Happen together” project from 2017 to 2019. Over those 5 years Save the Children and Nokia worked in the communities of three townships to improve early learning and development opportunities for the most marginalized children. A major achievement of this long-lasting partnership was the establishment of 60 community-managed early childhood care and development (ECCD) facilities and 33 kindergarten classrooms.
University collaboration
We have broad collaboration with the world's top universities and academic institutions. See below some examples of programs we engage in.
Distinguished Academic Partnership program
Nokia Bell Labs fosters intensive collaboration with the best and brightest minds from the world’s top universities and academic organizations to drive a vision of future human needs through its Distinguished Academic Partnership (DAP) program. It has created a global network of world-leading partners to develop disruptive innovation in technologies such as 6G, AI, and Industrial IoT.
Read more about the Distinguished Academic Partners (DAP) program
University donations
Our University Donations Program aims to sponsor high risk and high impact topics with future relevance to Nokia. The donations strengthen our relationship to top universities in Europe, the US and Asia, and we get access to top talent. This year we funded an industrial PhD program in Quantum Computing at Aalto University in Finland, 6G research including a National Science Foundation (NSF) program leading the 6G research in the US, projects on the ethical use of AI and data, use of wireless technology promoting sustainability, as well as projects using 5G for industry verticals.
Establishment of a Network Robotics Laboratory
Nokia collaborates with the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) in Bangalore to establish a network robotics laboratory which is envisioned for the use of startups, entrepreneurs and others.
The objective of this initiative is to carry out meaningful research on the design of next generation networks and application of Artificial Intelligence for solving societally relevant problems. With a growing demand for the ever-expanding requirement of robotics technology across multiple fields, such as search & rescue, immediate aid supply, performing hazardous tasks, cognitive development, academia and social care, expediting robot operations is becoming increasingly necessary.
The hypothesis here is that a reliable network infrastructure can be used to develop solutions such as fast and safe multi-robot operations with enhanced spatio-temporal awareness of humans and robots using edge devices; proactive collision detection and avoidance in areas of less visibility such as alleyway crossings and corners as well as fault tolerant robot operations with dynamic task (re)allocation.