Christmas has come early for Finnish kit vendor Nokia, with its competitors bestowing it with presents of breath-taking generosity.

Huawei was the first to smash through the secret Santa threshold, at least indirectly, when BT confirmed that Huawei would not be considered to contribute to its 5G core infrastructure and that it’s also being removed from legacy cores. This marked the first time a UK operator had directly addressed the matter of Huawei and 5G kit and would appear to be part of the move against Huawei by the US and its allies.

But that was just a stocking filler compared to what the US had under the tree. In a gesture of unprecedented aggression and hostility the US persuaded Canada to arrest Huawei’s CFO and daughter of its founder, Meng Wanzhou, and wants to extradite her to the US in order to face as yet unspecified charges.

This move is unrelated to all the stuff around 5G security and concerns suspected violations of US sanctions against certain countries. This is what drove ZTE so close to extinction earlier this year and would appear to be as much a front in the trade and political war between the US and China as it is any specific point of order. It also marks a significant escalation since no ZTE execs were subjected to this kind of legal rough treatment, and to add insult to injury it looks like some ZTE documents are being used in evidence against Huawei.

Huawei’s misfortunes alone must have had Nokia execs reaching for the breakfast bucks fizz, but when it emerged that Ericsson was responsible for major outages at some of its MNO core network partners they presumably ordered a whole new shipment of champers. The fact that Huawei is desperate to divert attention onto the Ericsson thing too must have resulted in port and brandy being added to the celebratory mix. Nokia’s resulting hangover may have been slightly exacerbated by the apparently effective damage limitation done by Ericsson, but on balance it can reflect on a pretty catastrophic week for the competition.

Nokia has sent out a few press releases this week but whatever incremental achievements they claim pale into insignificance compared to the misfortunes of Huawei and Ericsson. In the run up to Christmas Nokia would be well advised to focus all its resources on simply not screwing anything up and letting its competitive environment take care of itself.