Evolved Packed Core is a flat, efficient, IP-based core network architecture supporting the next generation of mobile broadband. Combined with LTE access networks, Evolved Packet Core will provide a whole new experience for Saudi users, with true broadband access virtually anywhere and a rich variety of multimedia applications.

The Ericsson Evolved Packet Core is optimised to cope with the increased uptake of mobile broadband and to secure a smooth evolution to all-IP networks.

More than 300 operators in 150 countries rely on Ericsson’s Packet Core solutions to offer new, compelling and efficient multimedia services.

The new division, which will focus on various industry verticals such as machine-to-machine (M2M), cloud services, commerce, digital advertisement, advanced communications, digital entertainment, and video services aims to boost the group position in the digital eco-system and drive innovation and advanced services to the group customers.

Al Shamsi joined Etisalat as a graduate trainee 19 years ago, and has since held various senior managerial positions within Etisalat UAE. Prior to his most recent appointment, Al Shamsi held the position of senior VP Technology Strategy for Etisalat Group, to which he was appointed in 2010, leading the Etisalat’s foray into the digital space.

Rajeev Suri is leading a strategy for which NSN will look to specialise in managed services alongside mobile broadband, innovation, and quality

Rajeev Suri is adamant that Ericsson, Huawei, NSN, Alcatel-Lucent, and ZTE cannot continue in their present, independent forms for all that much longer. His comments may prove prophetic, though ironically it is the organisation that he leads that faces as real a challenge for survival as any of the other four global telecom technology players.

The global economic crisis that took hold in 2008 is likely to be a further catalyst to the demise or re-organisation of one, and perhaps even more than one of the leading telecom suppliers. Investment in infrastructure continues to be relatively sluggish as service providers remain cautious about the outlook of their businesses. Competition is also intense amongst the suppliers themselves, with long, brutal battles of attrition for the awards of new contracts not being uncommon.

For the first quarter of 2012 to end-March, NSN reported operating losses of €1 billion (US$1.28 billion), and net sales decline of seven per cent year-on-year to €2.95 billion. The company attributed the fall primarily to a decline in sales of infrastructure equipment, which it said, however, was more than offset by a slight increase in sales of services. The sequential decline in NSN’s net sales in the first quarter 2012, the company said, was driven primarily by industry seasonality.

At constant currency, NSN’s net sales would have decreased nine per cent year-on-year and 24 per cent sequentially.

Tellingly, Chinese competitor Huawei is said to have overtaken NSN as the second-largest wireless infrastructure company in the world in terms of sales in the final quarter of 2011, according to ABI Research.

Huawei sold US$2.53 billion worth of equipment, up 54 per cent on the previous quarter and 38 per cent compared to the same quarter a year ago.

In contrast, NSN managed to generate US$2.4 billion in equipment sales during the same period.

Services already account for around 50 per cent of NSN’s revenues, with managed services growing the fastest, based on engagements in 180 operators around the world serving a total of 700 million subscribers. Suri has identified managed services alongside mobile broadband, innovation, and quality as NSN’s three-pronged strategy to beat the competition.

NSN has achieved some strong headway in the LTE space given the early commercialisation of networks in places like the US, Japan and Saudi Arabia. The telecom technology company currently holds 52 LTE contracts, which represents the most held by any other supplier to-date.

“We have established deep, trust-based relationships with customers with respect to mobile broadband,” Suri said. “There was a time when customers would have penalised us for no longer being an end-to-end provider, but not anymore,” he added.

NSN’s new strategic focus was articulated in November 2011 when the company stated its intention to reduce its global workforce, which stood at 74,000 on November 1, 2011 by approximately 17,000 or 23 per cent by the end of 2013. The planned reductions were expected to be driven by aligning the company’s workforce with its new strategy as well as through a range of productivity and efficiency measures.

At the time, NSN said it would target end-to-end mobile network infrastructure and services, with a particular emphasis on mobile broadband. The realignment was set to help the company focus its resources on mobile broadband (including optical), customer experience management, and services.

A view of NSN headquarters in Finland – market commentators doubt the long-term sustainability of five distinct global telecom technology providers

“Achieving an operating profit of 5-10 per cent is our long-term plan,” Suri said. In February he stated that 1,000 people had already come off the payroll since the November announcement, and that the programme would continue throughout the year affecting 55 countries, 30 of them in Europe.

“We expect NSN’s LTE market share to more than double this year from a revenue perspective,” Suri said, with the company expecting traction from LTE deployments across the globe to boost its performance in 2012. Current LTE uptake is skewed to the US market given the country counts approximately 60 per cent of the world’s LTE subscribers at the moment, though Suri forecasts that the technology’s introduction in other parts of the world will be to the telecom technology provider’s advantage.

“In Japan and Korea our position in LTE is very different (than it is in the US),” Suri said. “In Japan for example, NSN is the largest foreign wireless vendor, and in Korea we have been successful as a greenfield entry,” he added.

However, there is still some ways to go before the restructuring programme meets its stated aims. NSN is targeting to reduce its annualised operating expenses and production overheads by €1 billion by the end of 2013, compared to the end of 2011. While these savings are expected to come largely from organisational streamlining, NSN announced it would also target areas such as real estate, information technology, product and service procurement costs, overall general and administrative expenses, and a significant reduction of suppliers in order to further lower costs and improve quality.

The on-going restructuring and streamlining exercise is intensive business with NSN announcing at the beginning of March that it was cutting further jobs following the end of a managed services deal, and outsourcing some of its R&D activities.

Published reports suggested the company was cutting 3,500 jobs in Brazil, following the end of a managed services agreement with operator Oi. It gained 3,000 staff from the operator and third-parties as part of a deal in 2009.

NSN has also gone on to sign an agreement with Nordic IT services company Tieto to outsource part of the maintenance, technical support and R&D for NSN’s mobile network operations support system (OSS) and subscriber data management (SDM) activities in Finland.

This deal saw 240 staff transferring to Tieto, a company that already employs 18,000 staff.

NSN is also reported to have partnered with Juniper Networks for the launch of their Integrated Packet Transport Network solution, which is intended to address the need of service providers to simplify the network architecture by integrating multiple layers into a simple, scalable design that improves the economics of the core network infrastructure.

Customer experience management is another area that NSN would like to focus on, believing it has unparalleled network intelligence tools to offer.

“One billion records are being collected every minute on live networks,” Suri said. Such information can be collated and utilised to provide better services to end-users, as well as to better understand their requirements and preferences, thereby widening the selection of products and services available to them.

NSN is placing much emphasis on its Liquid Net suite of products, aimed at boosting the operation of mobile broadband networks

NSN is also placing a lot of emphasis on its Liquid Net suite of products, which include Liquid Radio, Liquid Core, Liquid Transport, and Liquid Net end-to-end Intelligent Broadband Management, which are all aimed at unleashing frozen network capacity into a reservoir of resources. The products enable a broadband network to instantly adapt to unpredictable changes in end-user demand and boosts network utilisation.

Liquid Radio helps eliminate the limitations of conventional radio access network architecture, while Liquid Core helps the core network to dynamically adapt itself to provide the capacity needed to ensure the best customer experience at the lowest cost. Liquid Transport is geared to help channel traffic along the path of least resistance through the network, while the Intelligent Broadband Management allows for the integration of traffic management and content management to create a more valuable mobile broadband experience while efficiently using the minimum network capacity.

A clear delineation appears to be becoming apparent between Ericsson and Huawei driving to become end-to-end solutions providers, and NSN, Alcatel-Lucent, and ZTE preferring an approach based on developing niche areas of specialisation in which to invest resources and dominate. It is likely therefore, that consolidation pressure will come from the specialist technology providers, and it is likely to be down to whose strategy implementation is most astute that differentiates the acquirer from the acquired.

According to Bloomberg, the restructure could set out the succession candidates for the top job at the group, although incumbent Vittorio Colao has not so far made any indication he plans to step down.

Among the options suggested was a split of the European region into two, integrating its more developed markets into one unit, with its emerging Turkey, Central and Eastern Europe businesses forming a second.

The report noted that Colao had identified an issue with the classification of Turkey, which while “clearly an engine for growth,” falls between the “sophisticated” western European businesses and its emerging markets operations.

Names mooted for promotion included Paolo Bertoluzzo, who runs Vodafone Italy, and Serpil Timuray, head of Vodafone Turkey.

Also in the frame is former Safaricom boss Michael Joseph, who is now director of global payments for the group.

It is suggested that the Indian market leader will pay INR50 billion (US$928 million) for the Indian firm set up by Qualcomm and its local partners two years ago to buy 4G Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) licences.

Sources say that Bharti will acquire the unit in instalments, initially purchasing the 26 per cent stake currently held by Tulip Telecom and Global Holding Corp, with Qualcomm maintaining 51 per cent ownership for at least two years.

“Qualcomm as the major partner will take all decisions with respect to bringing in any operator partners,” Tulip Telecom chairman Hardeep Singh Bedi told Bloomberg.

Qualcomm paid more than US$1 billion in 2010 for 20MHz of TDD BWA spectrum in the 2.3GHz band covering the key circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala. Bharti already owns BWA spectrum in four other circles and became the country’s first commercial 4G operator in April, launching services utilising TD-LTE technology in Kolkata.

A deal between Bharti and Qualcomm is thought to have been on the table for at least a year, but has been delayed due to problems with Qualcomm receiving the airwaves – an issue now thought to be resolved.

The US firm has consistently said it plans to exit the market once the venture is up and running.

The firm highlighted figures to show that the total French market had grown by 854,000 subscribers in Q1, suggesting that Free Mobile’s 2.6 million customers included a substantial number of defections from rivals. Market-leader Orange France lost 615,000 mobile customers following Free Mobile’s launch on January 10.

The firm also did well in its traditional fixed broadband business, surpassing five million subscribers for the first time. It added 191,000 new subscribers in the period, which it said accounted for “well over” half of all the country’s broadband net additions.

Iliad’s total Q1 revenue rose 29 per cent to €655.7 million (US$839 million). This included €97.5 million of revenue from the new mobile business.

Xius will be employing its Mobile Services Platform infrastructure and framework, currently deployed in multiple global locations, which will provide the MVNO with its own separate network components and capabilities.

"We have chosen Xius Mobile Services Platform after an exhaustive selection process that included an extensive list of vendors," said Eyas Al-Hajery, Mobily’s senior executive VP for Wholesale and Carrier Services. "The platform will enable Mobily to provide carrier class comprehensive MNO/MVNE services to potential MVNOs".

Telkom recently announced it was looking to replace out-dated DSLAM boxes with newer technology as part of its plan to move to an all-IP network designed to enable fixed-mobile convergence and truly differentiated high-speed broadband.

ZTE Mzansi believed Telkom’s bidding process was not fair and that its tender was never properly considered, despite complying with all of Telkom’s requirements, including those on empowerment and technical capability.

ZTE said the legal proceedings were instituted without its approval and without the backing of its representative on the board of ZTE Mzanzi. Fuentes said the lack of authorisation from ZTE to proceed with the Telkom litigation has been one of the elements that motivated its decision to sever ties. He said the main reason is a lack of consultation with ZTE in Hong Kong in key decisions.

Du is said to be looking for similar virtual network opportunities in other countries, but no decision has been taken yet.

The telco subsequently put out a statement saying, ‘Evaluating growth opportunities to maintain competitive advantage, increase shareholder value and ensure sustainable growth has and will continue to be the primary focus for Du.

With that in mind, and in the normal course of business, we always keep an eye on any opportunities that might be in the best interests of the company and its shareholders.

Our strategy is, and as always has been, to focus on the UAE. If and when we have anything new to announce, we will communicate details to the market.”

Former Vodacom CEO, Alan Knott-Craig moved to Cell C at the start of April when his non-compete clause expired, and had been rumoured to be trying to lure across several of his former colleagues to the company.

A Cell C spokesperson is reported to have confirmed to media sources in South Africa that the former COO at Vodacom’s Nigeria subsidiary will take up a similar role at Cell C, while a former Vodacom Mozambique manager will be the new CTO.

The third appointment is former Vodacom Mozambique CEO Jose dos Santos who will be joining the company at an unspecified position in the near future.