In a seven-year Asia-Pacific network management deal, Nokia Siemens Networks will run the network for Vodafone Hutchison Australia, which provides mobile services to 7 million customers in the country.
Formed last year in a joint venture between Vodafone and Hong Kong-based operator Hutchison, VHA offers service under the Vodafone and 3 brands in Australia. Nokia Siemens will take over management of several key elements of the mobile network and supply equipment for the core network. NSN will also be in charge of combining the two providers‘ core systems. The Finnish vendor, itself a joint venture between German electronics giant Siemens and the world’s largest maker of mobile handsets, will also use its Flexi Network Gateway to boost capacity in the network.
NSN last year signed a similar deal with Orange Spain, a division of France Telecom, which handed Nokia Siemens a five-year managed-service contract for its 11.3 million mobile subscribers. Such outsourcing deals are becoming more common as service providers increasingly shed back-end network operations to focus on marketing, customer service, and advanced services to fuel subscriber growth. Last July Ericsson (ERIC) signed a $5 billion managed services contract to handle day-to-day operation of the network owned by Sprint Nextel (S).
Deals like the VHA outsourcing contract are an important source of revenue for NSN, which has lost ground to rivals Ericsson and low-cost Chinese competitor Huawei. Last fall Nokia (NOK) and Siemens (SI) were reported to be seeking a buyer for the JV, and Siemens warned it might have to write down its 50 percent stake in the deal.
