The Big Three are looking to create interoperability between OSS

The three biggest infrastructure players, Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson and Huawei, this week signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate with a view to reducing Operations Support Systems (OSS) integration costs for carriers and enabling shorter time-to-market for new services.

The OSS interoperability initiative (OSSii) is designed to facilitate multi-vendor interoperability ‘up front’ between the OSS products of all three vendors, simplifying operations, reducing the overall integration costs as well as speeding up the time it takes to roll out new services.

The reciprocal agreement will cover fault, performance, configuration and basic network event and trace management for the northbound interfaces from Radio Access, Circuit Core and Packet Core network management systems. Under the terms of the agreement, the signing parties are committing to bilateral cross licensing agreements for multi-vendor network management.

Cross-licensing and interoperability testing is also open for other third-party OSS vendors to participate in by joining the OSSii.

“The OSS marketplace is a patchwork of standards and proprietary interfaces that are controlled by the IPR owners. With cross-license agreements, we want to help operators take full advantage of the best available products in our industry,” said Peter Patomella, head of operations support systems (OSS) business at Nokia Siemens Networks. “Openness and fairness have been the guiding principles in the agreement of the OSS Interoperability Initiative.”

The OSSii portal can be found here

Netia has deployed 100G fibre across its network as it looks to benefit from a 40-fold increase in bandwidth

Polish fixed line operator Netia has deployed 100G fibre across its network as it looks to benefit from a 40-fold increase in bandwidth.

The operator has called on the Optical Networks business unit of Nokia Siemens Networks to supply the upgrade. In December last year NSN announced that it would be selling this unit Marlin Equity Partners in a deal expected to close before the middle of the year. The business will be rebranded as Coriant.

The upgraded network is based on NSN’s optical transport DWDM platform and 100G transponder, and will increase bandwidth across Netia’s network from 2.5G to 100G per channel, according to NSN. The solution was integrated into Netia’s existing fibre optical infrastructure provided by a third party vendor, NSN added.

“With this upgrade, we can transmit over a single fibre the capacity required for more than 800,000 broadband service customers to be connected simultaneously to the Internet,” said Marek Owczarski, technology development manager at Netia.

Herbert Merz, NSN’s head of Optical Networks, added that by integrating NSN’s solutions into its existing network, Netia has protected its investment in network infrastructure. He added that in doing so, the operator has expanded the capacity of its network for a fraction of the cost compared with swapping out the existing infrastructure.

“We are confident that the upgrade to ultra-fast data transmission allows Netia to ensure a superior mobile broadband customer experience,” Merz added.

The WDM and Next Generation Optical Networking event takes place in Monaco, 17th – 20th June. For more information click here.

If there is one broad theme that sums up this year’s Mobile World Congress for me it is the idea of ‘the network as asset’, and the perception that CSPs could and should be doing a great deal more to leverage this their prime asset.

Customer experience also figured highly in the briefings and presentations I attended, but by contrast with last year’s heavy CEM-software product focus, this year customer experience was discussed just as much in the context of network performance and the need to make more effective use of network intelligence.

The network as asset
The launch of NSN’s Liquid Applications provides a good starting point for my MWC overview as it illustrates how central network and IT assets are not just to delivering operational efficiencies and good customer experience but also to generating new services.

NSN CEO Rajeev Suri made a point of emphasising the untapped value of the network when discussing Liquid Applications: “we need to leverage the value of the network, it is a massive asset.”

A complement to NSN’s Liquid Net portfolio, Liquid Applications pushes processing capabilities from the core out to the network edge, caching content locally at the base station in order to improve network performance and customer experience.

Some initial reactions to Liquid Applications have pointed out that there are existing tools such as Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) that can be used to reduce transmission costs and maintain good user experience. But I think what is particularly interesting about Liquid Applications is not just how it provides processing and storage capabilities at the BTS but also how it can work closely with IBM Big Data-driven analytics technology to enable new services.

At the heart of Liquid Applications is NSN’s Radio Application Cloud Server (RACS) and this, together with IBM’s WebSphere Application Service Platform for Networks (ASPN) platform, delivers service creation capabilities. Liquid Applications both gathers real-time network data – about radio conditions, subscriber location, direction of travel, etc – and turns the data into context-relevant services.

Both NSN and IBM stands at the show had a demo of a ‘City in Motion’ solution which analyzes radio data to help identify population flow and so configure city’s transport network in real-time, and this was quoted as an example of the type of service that could be enabled by Liquid Applications.

This emphasis on making better use of the network ties in neatly with some of the managed services network optimisation and network opportunities discussions I had at MWC. The managed services market is changing because CSPs are increasingly looking to partner with someone who understands their business well enough to add real value, and because vendors are being more selective with their services businesses, focusing on managed services or SI projects which deliver business benefits rather than just reduced costs. In this context, planning and optimization services can be expected to play a key role in supporting solutions such as NSN’s Liquid Applications.

Continuing the same theme, Ericsson also chose MWC to highlight its new ‘Experience Centric Managed Services’ engagement model, where it seeks to align the management and operation of the network and IT environment to operator’s business objectives, including risk- and reward-related pricing.

Interestingly when quizzed about R&D investment levels, Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg pointed out that the vendor has been investing heavily in developing new processes but that this type of investment in the services business does not show up in R&D figures. You can see why a CEO might be motivated to make that kind of remark but nevertheless it’s true to say that vendor innovativeness will increasingly need to be measured not just on investment in R&D but also in new processes.

Finally, with respect to the network as asset and customer experience themes, it’s worth mentioning Software Defined Networks (SDNs). SDNs were a hot topic at this year’s MWC and one that Dimitris Mavrakis covers in more detail in his MWC blog. It is enough to emphasise here that SDN strategies will be as much about providing advanced QoE for end users as about delivering improved functionality and network control. QoE measurement, advanced traffic analysis and analytics, service assurance, as well as application-level optimization are all aspects of the customer experience that can be better supported by SDNs.

Customer experience
The joint GSMA and Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance conference stream on the last day of MWC is always a good place to get a flavour of what is coming next on the network technology front, but interestingly this year’s topic focus was as much on enhanced customer experience as it was on more obvious technology evolution topics such as converged network operations and SDNs.

The session kicked off with SKT CEO and NGMN Alliance chairman Jae Byun looking at how user experience would be managed in an environment characterized by heavy data traffic and asserting that “the stars are now aligned for quality mobile service”. According to Byun the NGMN Alliance will be increasingly focusing on customer experience in addition to the more traditional areas it has looked at in the past.

Topics addressed during this particular session included edge caching, mobile video and mobile content delivery optimisation, transcoding, network-aware adaptation, just-in-time delivery and load balancing. However, the question of how operators could monetize good customer experience – the elephant in the room – was left unaddressed.

The same conference stream also included a plea from Tele2 CTIO Joachim Horn for improved vendor solutions, more functionality and better standardization to support QoS in shared networks. He also suggested a smarter network edge to enable better user experience. Tele2 is an early and consistent proponent of network sharing, so Horn’s concerns about the problem with how QoS is addressed in shared networks clearly carry weight.

The customer experience focus was also picked up in some of the MWC keynotes, including comments by Telefonica CEO Cesar Alierta around the need for operators to focus more on offering “enhanced customer experience”.

Peter Dykes’ MWC blog covers OSS/BSS announcements in more detail but I just wanted to briefly mention here some of the customer experience-related topics OSS/BSS vendors spoke to me about in Barcelona.

Process automation cropped up in various guises, with the consultancies and big IT companies typically giving it a stronger business process automation twist. Service assurance, order and service management tools, inventory management and order-to-activation systems, and self-service all figured highly.

Many of the OSS/BSS vendors I spoke to also stressed the importance of linking product implementations to business processes in order to deliver more value to their customers. Amdocs for example when talking about transformational managed services talked about the need for ‘value process alignment’ to help link order-to-activation process with key business indicators.

This was not unusual as several vendors voiced concerns about CSPs continuing to be hampered by their siloed structures and unable to align their organizations adequately around key business objectives. I sense that continuing vendor focus on offering professional services is driven as much by frustration that investment in the necessary tools to support customer experience will not happen if CSPs are left to do it themselves.

More generally, network vendors such as NSN, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent continued their CEM-product push and Huawei demonstrated some interesting CEM and customer experience assurance additions to its SmartCare portfolio.

Customer experience may adopt a different guise each year but will continue to dominate MWC discussions in years to come.

Finally, some travel advice for those planning to attend #MWC14
Whatever you do next year don’t attempt to travel by train from the Fira to the airport via Gornal/Bellvitge. I thought I was being clever avoiding the taxi queues by taking what looked like a short FGC ride to the airport but ended up on a rain-swept railway platform somewhere in the outer suburbs in the company of half a dozen equally lost-looking MWC delegates, a solitary security guard and a wet Alsatian. A hand-painted “esta estación es del tercer mundo” protest sign hanging outside the station entrance pretty much summed up the experience. Clearly it’s not just telecoms sector that is grappling with infrastructure and customer experience issues.

Operators can pushing processing capabilities out to the network edge

Infrastructure vendor Nokia Siemens Networks and IT giant IBM focused on moving intelligence to the network edge on Monday with the unveiling of a mobile edge computing platform designed to run applications within the mobile base station.

The concept is designed to take some of the strain off network and speed delivery and localisation of services. Lower latency presence-based services enabled by the platform might be gaming, augmented reality or location specific information such as traffic updates.

NSN’s Liquid Applications portfolio will be providing a foundation built on by IBM’s experience in big data driven analytics to deliver an offering with relevance beyond the telco sector. The example used in the announcement describes how IBM technology can analyse data collected by the network to estimate how many people are moving through the city, by which mode of transport and location, allowing city planners to optimise the transport network.

NSN believes the model will allow operators to create new value from mobile network investments.

“Pushing applications, processing and storage to the edge of the mobile network allows large complex problems to be distributed into many smaller and more manageable pieces and to be physically located at the source of the information it needs to work on,” said Phil Buckellew, VP IBM mobile enterprise. “This enables a huge amount of rich data to be processed in real time that would be prohibitively complex and costly to deliver on a traditional centralised cloud.”

The Chilean arm of operator group Telefónica has selected infrastructure vendor Nokia Siemens Networks to build its LTE network, The vendor will also help Movistar Chile to expand its 3G network.

The carrier’s 4G network operates in the 2.6 GHz frequency band and its contract with NSN covers the capital area, Greater Santiago, with close to six million inhabitants, as well as other cities such as Valparaíso and Viña del Mar.

The two firms have a history of working together, said NSN, pointing out that in 2011, it signed an LTE contract with Telefónica (O2) in Germany, and in 2012 for Telefónica (O2) in the United Kingdom.

“Introducing the LTE network will give the best possible mobile broadband experience to our customers” said Gustavo Marambio, CTO at Movistar Chile. “NSN has been our trusted mobile broadband technology vendor for a decade and we are excited to continue our successful collaboration with this new LTE contract and the expansion of our 3G contract.”

Japan's NTT Docomo has selected vendors Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Panasonic to develop its LTE-A network architecture

Japanese operator NTT Docomo has selected vendors Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Panasonic to develop its next generation LTE-A network architecture. In one of the earliest roll out of the technology, the two vendors will provide the operator with base stations that are optimised for LTE Advanced.

According to NSN, the base stations will ensure capacity of 300Mbps in the network and facilitate a cloud-based architecture and services. Remote Radio Heads (RRH) will be used in a roll out of small cells to enhance the coverage and capacity of the LTE-A network.

The base station hardware and software will be based on NSN’s Liquid Radio architecture. NSN and Panasonic began collaborating in 2007 to deliver LTE network infrastructure to Docomo. The two were contracted by the operator to launch LTE commercial services in 2010.

NSN's annual loss increased from -€300m in 2011 to -€799 in 2012

Infrastructure vendor Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has seen its operating profit for 4Q12 increase a staggering 275 per cent year on year. The €251m generated in the quarter dwarfed the €67m recorded in 4Q11, but the performance could not prevent the firm from seeing its annual loss slide to more than two and a half times as deep as 2011; from -€300m in 2011 to -€799m in 2012.

Net sales for the firm remained relatively steady for the quarter, increasing by five per cent year on year from €3.8bn to €4bn. Net sales for the full year, however, dropped two per cent year on year, to €13.8bn.

The firm added that is expecting to see at best, modest growth in 1Q13, due to the impact of competition, the first quarter being a seasonally weak quarter, the firm’s ongoing restructuring programme and the macroeconomic environment.

The firm is in the midst of a large restructuring programme to transform NSN into a “mobile broadband specialist”.

The firm announced plans to axe 17,000 jobs – almost a quarter of its 74,000 global workforce – and reduce operating expenses and production overheads by €1bn, compared with the end of 2011,by the end of 2013.

Kris Szaniawski, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, believes that despite the full-year performance comparing unfavourably to its performance in 2011, the signs are encouraging for the vendor.

“The last five quarters have been going in the right direction for NSN, and the second half of 2012 was much stronger than the first half,” he said. “For a company going through such an extensive restructuring process, the results are going in the right direction.”

He added that the firm could build on this performance in 2013, but there will be intensified pressure on its revenues.

“NSN has been ruthless cutting costs, and that is now showing – it’s doing well in terms of cost reduction, but there is more pressure on revenue now, and a narrower scope means more risk, as the company will now be dependent on growing revenue fewer markets.”

In December last year, the company reached an agreement to sell its business support systems (BSS) business to billing and charging software provider Redknee.

It has now divested seven of its “non-core” business units since announcing a restructuring of the company in November 2011.

It had already sold off its microwave transport business to DragonWave and its broadband access unit to US firm Adtran. A WiMAX operation acquired from Motorola in 2011 was also sold on in a back to back to deal to NewNet Communication Technologies. The vendor’s IPTV and Expedience units have also been sold.

NSN has also announced plans to offload its optical networks business to investment firm Marlin Equity Partners; Optical Networks had not previously been identified as a non-core business. There are three further units that NSN has identified as being non-core: Perfect Voice, the firm’s fixed line VoIP offering; Narrowband and Carrier Ethernet.

Infrastructure vendor Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) is set to exit 2012 having shed almost every operation it does not consider a core asset, in line with the restructuring plan it outlined in November 2011.

The year culminated in parent company Nokia selling and leasing back its head office building in Espoo, Finland, because “owning real estate is not part of Nokia’s core business”. The firm received €170m for its headquarters from Exilion Capital, a company owned by four Finnish institutions specialising in the management of real estate private equity funds.

Nokia recently posted an operating profit of €182m for the third quarter of 2012, coming up from a loss of €227m in the previous quarter and a loss of €114m in the third quarter of 2011.

In a quest to complete its transformation into a “mobile broadband specialist,” NSN has now divested seven of its “non-core” business assets since November 2011. “During 2012 Nokia Siemens Networks has made tremendous progress in the transformation of our company to being the world’s mobile broadband specialist. Our strategic focus on our core markets has enabled us to concentrate our energy and investment in areas such as LTE where we have strengthened our global leadership position,” said Rajeev Suri, chief executive officer at NSN.

The most recent operational disposal was NSN’s business support systems (BSS) unit, which went to billing and charging software provider Redknee. Under the terms of the deal, approximately 1,200 NSN employees will transfer to Redknee. Earlier this year the vendor outsourced a portion of its OSS and Subscriber Data Management activities to Finnish managed services player Tieto.

In the same week, the company announced plans to offload its optical networks business to investment firm, Marlin Equity Partners, and have the business spun off as a separate company that intends to run as “an industry leader in the fragmented optical networking sector.”

As a result of the transaction, up to 1,900 employees— mainly in Germany, Portugal and China—are expected to transfer to the new company in line with applicable local legal requirements. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013 and will be headquartered in Munich, Germany.

Earlier in the year, the fixed-wireless broadband business, which NSN acquired as part of the Expedience portfolio it bought from Motorola Solutions networks, went to privately held Spanish firm, CN Tetragen. Meanwhile the broadband access unit was sold to US firm Adtran, the WiMAX business went to infrastructure player NewNet Communication Technologies and the microwave business to DragonWave.

These deals involved around 1,000 staff transfers in addition to the 17,000 staff reduction announced in November, taking the total number of staff reductions announced so far past 18,000. As it seeks to refocus, the company is looking to third parties to bolster its offerings. In the summer the vendor signed a global reseller agreement with wifi specialist Ruckus Wireless to help operators integrate wifi coverage as part of its small cells portfolio designed for mobile broadband services, a strategy which fits with its mobile broadband strategy.

There are three further units that NSN has identified as being non-core: Perfect Voice, the firm’s fixed line VoIP offering; Narrowband and Carrier Ethernet.

“We’ve not made any announcements about these businesses—they are in maintenance mode,” an NSN spokesman said. “We think the industry is evolving towards vendors that are focused and not ones that try to be end-toend. We see that as something our customers are supporting and actually now our competitors are trying to copy it.”

Conversely, Ericsson is focused on leveraging assets that it has acquired in recent years. Building on the acquisition of Telcordia in 2011, B/OSS has become a key strategic area for Ericsson to focus on as it is so closely tied to SDN (software defined network) evolution, according to CTO Ulf Uwaldsson.

In line with NSN’s deal with Ruckus, Ericsson has also recognised the challenge in integration of wifi technologies with those developed by the 3GPP. Building on another acquisition— BelAir networks in April of 2012—Ericsson is now tackling the issue with a wifi controller interface that talks to the 3GPP core, allowing operators to apply the same policy control and charging mechanisms. The company unveiled the first product to make use of this technology in October, with the launch of a stadium optimised wifi access point and controller.

And with Redback, which gave it strong assets in IP routing technology, the firm acquired the “glue” to hold broadcast, IT and telecoms services together in the broadcast services division of Technicolor.

Nonetheless, Ericsson has not avoided some dieting of its own. In August, US access solutions provider Calix acquired the company’s fibre access assets and more recently the company began to cut 1,550 jobs in its native Sweden, following third quarter earnings in which it saw a 42 per cent year on year reduction in net income.

But still, Ericsson has an extensive portfolio of businesses and was even in the frame to pick up NSN’s BSS unit. It will be interesting to see how the two strategies play out, with Ericsson looking to function as a one-stop shop, while a streamlined NSN is keeping its focus very much on mobile broadband, with radio access and core at the heart of the strategy, but supported by customer experience management, network intelligence and services.

Right, that’s that out of the way, let’s get on with the real news. Christmas will soon be upon us and what better time than this to de-clutter. So says Nokia Siemens Networks, anyhow, as it continues to jettison non-core assets.

“Darling, can we please get rid of this BSS unit? You never use it and it’s covered in cat hair.”

“My mum gave me that!”

“Yes, darling, but we both know you’re never going to take it up seriously.”

“But it’s got 1,200 employees! Look at their little faces!”

“They’ll be ok, someone else will look after them.”

“Well if that’s going then we’re getting rid of your optical networks business too!”

Redknee is bagging NSN’s BSS business for an undisclosed sum (probably a snip, then). As well as the staff it gets 130 existing customer relationships, including half of the top 100 mobile operators in the world, the firms said. Earlier in the week NSN announced plans to offload its optical networks business to an investment firm called Marlin Equity Partners in the hope that it will become “an industry leader in the fragmented optical networking sector”—and what are we without hope? Also, what is fragmented optical?

Nokia Siemens has now divested seven of its non-core units (although the optical business had not previously been identified as such) since this time last year, as part of its restructuring plan. There are three more to go, the firm’s VoIP business and it’s Narrowband and Carrier Ethernet units. These businesses are apparently in “maintenance mode”. If the Informer were you, he’d wait ‘til the new year sales. They’ll be cheap as chips.

NSN is betting the farm on specialisation in networks; the exact opposite of Ericsson’s strategy to build strength in breadth. “We think the industry is evolving towards vendors that are focused and not ones that try to be end-to-end,” said an NSN spokesperson. “We see that as something our customers are supporting and actually now our competitors are trying to copy it.”

Whether the firm’s self-styling as a “mobile broadband specialist” makes a more convincing story than Ericsson’s one-stop shop remains to be seen; but NSN’s competitors would doubtless take umbrage at the implication that diversity leads to mediocrity. All of this divestment is quite possibly a bid to make the firm a more attractive acquisition target, of course. Because the parents aren’t exactly living the high life at the moment.

Nokia took the non-core assets argument to a new level this week by embarking on an HQaaS strategy. The firm announced the sale of its Espoo headquarters to a real estate outfit this week as part of a deal that will see it lease the site back. It may make financial sense for now but how must it feel to have to flog your home to an estate agent and then pay them so you can carry on living there? Sad times.

“When good opportunities arise we are willing to exit these types of non-core assets,” said Timo Ihamuotila, Nokia’s CFO, before selling his shoes to the local cobbler and immediately renting them back.

Once Nokia no longer owns this particular non-core asset, of course, it won’t really be in control of when it has to exit it.

The Informer’s chum and ITM analyst Malik Saadi had some words of encouragement to offer: ““The situation is getting critical. Nokia cannot afford another bad quarter, it’s now playing for its survival over the next two quarters,” he said. “I don’t think investors will afford Nokia another bad quarter and Q4 is going to be very tough, the competition is very intense.” Sorry, did the Informer say ‘encouragement’? He meant ‘doom’.

Can you imagine the awkward moment when Nokia’s new landlord has to turn the firm out onto the street so a Chinese family can move in? A Chinese family with a $20bn credit line from the state bank? This, of course, is the alternative to asset stripping and selling your shoes. What you do is, you go to the bank and ask for twenty billion dollars. ZTE is hoping that it will work.

According to Hou Weigui, the firm’s chairman, ZTE will use this financial support to “grasp the opportunities in the markets for 4G, fixed broadband, enterprise networks and terminals, consolidate our advantages and migrate to the higher value solutions, as we aim to achieve a global top-3 position before 2015.” Wiffle waffle wiffle waffle wiffle waffle. Condense all of this advantage consolidation guff and you get the posh girl’s catchphrase: “Daddy pays!”

But casting itself as the Veruca Salt of the telecoms industry might not help ZTE, according to Matt Walker, an infrastructure sector analyst at Ovum. “Accepting this support will make it harder for ZTE to further penetrate western European and North American markets, where policymakers are concerned about unfair competition from Chinese suppliers,” Walker warned. “This news will not go unnoticed by ZTE’s opponents, both those in the marketplace and the political sphere.” D’oh.

In happier news there is now LTE in Hobbiton. New Zealand’s incumbent operator Telecom has begun trialling its LTE network in parts of Wellington and Auckland. Alcatel Lucent is running the trial in the Lower Hutt area of Wellington while Huawei is flipping the switches in Auckland’s North Shore. The lucky folk getting access to the trial network will be able to watch highlights of last Saturday’s Rugby match between England and the All Blacks in glorious HD. What a game that was! Telecom is aiming for commercial switch on in late 2013 or early 2014.

Meanwhile the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has forked out 2.6GHz spectrum for that country’s own LTE operations. Eight operators have been allocated licences: Celcom Axiata, DiGi Telecommunications, Maxis Broadband, Packet One Networks, Puncak Semangat, REDtone, U Mobile and YTL Communications.

Eight LTE network operators in a market of 30 million people?! Even Ofcom wouldn’t go that far. MCMC chairman Dato’ Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi said that he believes that the commission has struck a balance between ensuring “healthy competition in the market and promoting industry development that will help spur growth for existing operators and new market entrants.” The Informer believes that was the MCMC has done is sow the seeds of future rounds of consolidation.

They already have LTE in Tajikistan but you can’t use if it you’ve got an iPhone 5. Last week’s Telecoms.com scoop on Apple’s LTE network testing policies brought the Informer into touch with Mr Jafar Asimov, head of the automation department at the country’s leading operator, Babilon-Mobile.

Asimov said that he’d been trying to get in touch with Apple in a bid to get his LTE network approved by the handset vendor, but to no avail. Babilon, which had three million subscribers at the end of September, activated its LTE network in October after re-farming 2G spectrum in the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands. But the operator only realised there was a problem with Apple’s latest smarpthone when iPhone 5 owners began complaining that LTE connectivity was not working on their device.

There are no handset subsidies in Tajikistan so users often bring their own devices to the network. Asimov said that it was only when he got iPhone 5 handsets in for testing that he discovered there was no way of activating LTE connectivity without Apple’s intervention.

“There is no information available about activating LTE,” he said. “We got no help and no response from Apple on this.”

Asimov said he believes that Apple activates LTE by running a whitelist of approved networks.

“According to our research, the iPhone 5 talks to a server at Apple, which keeps a list of approved PLMN (public land mobile network) codes,” Asimov said. Every operating network has a PLMN administered by the country’s regulator. It is a unique code identifying the operator. If the code is present in the database when the device comes online, then an LTE switch magically appears in the iPhone settings panel, he said.

“We have the network, we have a reasonable subscriber base, and we are eager to provide our customers using iPhone5 the best experience using our fast and reliable high speed internet access,” said Asimov.

Informa analyst Dimitris Mavrakis said that Apple’s policy is indeed likely to hit the smaller networks hardest. “Apple would not do this to the tier one players,” Mavrakis said. “But for smaller operators, or European players with a limited subscriber base, Apple has the audacity to do this and I’m not sure all operators will even make it to the testing phase.”

Apple has decided to anoint T-Mobile USA, however. The only major carrier not to sell the iPhone in the US, T-Mo will begin offering Apple products in the new year, its parent Deutsche Telekom said this week. Now, at last, it can be like the other children.

Standing in the naughty corner this week is Nordic operator Telenor. The firm is being investigated by the EFTA Surveillance Authority, which monitors compliance with European Economic Area rules in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, as well as the Norwegian Competition Authority. It seems that Telenor might have been abusing its dominant position  in the market and engaging in anti-competitive practices. Bad Telenor! In your basket!

In a statement the firm said: “Telenor has strict internal rules and procedures on compliance with laws and regulations. Telenor will co-operate with the authorities in carrying out the investigation so that it can be conducted in an efficient manner. Besides this, Telenor has currently no further comments on this issue.” Among the no further comments was: “we’re innocent”.

Finally, the Informer can’t believe that five years have passed since last Neil Papworth graced his weekly scribblings. And ten years have passed since the time before that. This is because this week saw the 20^th anniversary of SMS messaging. And Mr P’s name gets bandied about on these occasions because, as a young network engineer, he sent the first text message all those years ago. The Informer has no idea why this is really newsworthy, or Papworthy, but somebody always puts out a release about it and the Informer always feels strangely compelled to give it a nod.

Seriously, though! Kate Middleton’s having a baby!!

Take care

The Informer

NSN is to sell its BSS unit to Redknee

Infrastructure provider Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has reached an agreement to sell its business support systems (BSS) business to billing and charging software provider Redknee. Under the terms of the deal, approximately 1200 NSN employees would transfer to Redknee.

NSN’s BSS business provides real-time charging, rating, policy, and customer care solutions to more than 130 communication service providers. The firm said that Redknee is best suited to take ownership of the business based on the strength of its management team, continuity of the current BSS portfolio, and access to innovation for NSN’s BSS customers.

The acquisition would involve the transfer to Redknee of Nokia Siemens Networks’ BSS customer and supplier contracts, intellectual property rights, fixed assets and associated liabilities, along with BSS employees. The employees expected to transfer to Redknee are mainly based in Germany, India Poland. The acquisition is anticipated to close in the first half of calendar year 2013.

NSN has now divested seven of its “non-core” business units since announcing a restructuring of the company in November 2011.

Last year, it sold off its microwave transport business to DragonWave and its broadband access unit to US firm Adtran. A WiMAX operation acquired from Motorola in 2011 was also sold on in a back to back to deal to NewNet Communication Technologies. The vendor’s IPTV and Expedience units have also been sold, as the firm steps up its transformation into a “mobile broadband specialist”.

Earlier this week the firm also announced plans to offload its optical networks business to an investment firm. Optical Networks had not previously been identified as a non-core business.

There are three further units that NSN has identified as being non-core: Perfect Voice, the firm’s fixed line VoIP offering; Narrowband and Carrier Ethernet.

“We’ve not made any announcements about these businesses – they are in maintenance mode,” an NSN spokesperson said, adding that there is no guarantee that these businesses will be divested.

“We think the industry is evolving towards vendors that are focused and not ones that try to be end-to-end,” the spokesperson added. “We see that as something our customers are supporting and actually now our competitors are trying to copy it.”