Nokia and Siemens talk up joint venture

Nokia and Siemens today unveiled proposed products from their newly announced 50:50 joint venture, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).

Speaking at the 3GSM World Congress, NSN chief operating officer-designate Mika Vehvilainen said: "Our customers have responded positively to the proposed merger, and with this announcement we aim to justify their faith in us."

The proposed portfolio plan covers six future business units for NSN: Radio Access, Service Core and Applications, Operation Support Systems, Broadband Access, IP/Transport and Services.

The joint venture will continue developing GSM/Edge radio and WCDMA/HSPA Node Bs without change, acknowledging the large installed bases of both companies.

NSN will also migrate to a common Radio Network Controller that will support both installed bases.

Additional development priorities include IP Multimedia Subsystem, mobile and fixed soft switches, media gateways, push-to-talk over cellular, intelligent networks, packet core, mobile TV (DVB-H), IPTV and converged charging.

NSN is also committed to migrating to a common microwave transport system and a single IP DSLAM offering, while continuing all other IP/transport and broadband access products without change.

One "umbrella solution" will be developed for managing convergent and multi-vendor networks with a fault, performance and configuration management portfolio based on Nokia's NetAct platform.

NSN also promised to form a global services capability to support a combined client base of over 300 fixed and 300 mobile clients in more than 100 countries.

The planned merger is expected to close in the first quarter of 2007, subject to closing conditions.

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