Hutchison 3G Shifts London Project From Nokia to NEC-Siemens Pairing
Monday March 18, 12:33 am Eastern Time
LONDON -- In the race to build third-generation mobile -phone networks, Nokia
Corp. appears to have tripped up in an early United Kingdom project,
Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.
The Finnish company last year was asked by mobile -phone operator Hutchison
3G UK Ltd. to supply radio equipment for an early rollout of a 3G network in the
London market and the south of Britain. But Hutchison has since given the task to
a partnership between NEC Corp. of Japan (NIPNY) and Siemens AG of Germany
, according to an official at NEC and other people familiar with the situation.
NEC and its partner had originally been assigned to build the northern U.K.
network for Hutchison, a joint venture of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. of Hong Kong ,
KPN Mobile NV of the Netherlands and NTT DoCoMo Inc. of Japan . Nokia will
instead supply the 3G network equipment for that later rollout in the north of Britain,
according to these people. The switch was finalized in January, some of these
people said.
The new networks will allow for high-speed transmission of data over mobile
phones. Telecommunications companies are banking on revenue from 3G
services to shore up their earnings, recouping investments in licenses and
technology. A handful of equipment companies, including Sweden 's Telefon AB
L.M. Ericsson, Siemens and Canada 's Nortel Networks Corp., are fighting tooth
and nail for these contracts in Europe and elsewhere. Contracts typically get doled
out to several equipment makers to foster competition; many of the contracts run
into billions of dollars and take years to execute.
Hutchison "swapped it around because of the delay of the other company
[Nokia] ," said Michikazu Chihara, manager of the first Mobile Systems Sales
Department in NEC's international mobile -systems division, in an interview at the
German trade fair CeBIT.
A spokesman for Nokia said the arrangement with Hutchison hasn't changed in
the past six months, and Nokia's deliveries have been on schedule during that
time.
A Hutchison spokesman declined to comment, except to say "the long-term value
of the contracts stays the same."
biz.yahoo.com
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Nokia appears to have stumbled in a mobile-phone network project in the
U.K. after Hutchinson 3G switched the contract to NEC and Siemens...
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