NSN agrees to sell off BSS unit

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.

Dawinderpal Sahota

December 5, 2012

2 Min Read
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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 thatRedknee 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.”

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