T-Mobile's chief technology officer, Neville Ray, was quoted in a press release about the Nokia deal as saying that "every dollar we spend is a 5G dollar, and our agreement with Nokia underscores the kind of investment we're making to bring customers a mobile, nationwide 5G network."  

Spending $3.5 billion for networking equipment and services is no small investment, but it's part of the carrier's larger commitment to spend $40 billion over the next few years on wireless spectrum, hardware, and services to make its 5G network a reality.  

The deal with Nokia will give T-Mobile access to new platforms and cloud-based services, along with hardware, which will help the company test and deploy nationwide 5G signals across T-Mobile's 600 GHz wireless spectrum.