NSN's Plans for Nortel LTE (and CDMA) Assets ...
... which assume that Nokia will be able to complete the acquisition and do so in reasonably timely fashion, neither of which are a given.
>> NSN Reveals Plans for Nortel's LTE
Michelle Donegan
Unstrung
July 1, 2009
unstrung.com
Nokia Siemens Networks has shed light on what it plans to do with the Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT) Long Term Evolution (LTE) assets.
NSN's head of radio access, Marc Rouanne, tells Unstrung that the vendor plans to incorporate Nortel's LTE algorithms and software into its own flagship Flexi base station platform. NSN will not maintain or have to integrate two separate LTE base station product platforms.
"There will be only the Flexi base station," says Rouanne. "To strengthen the Flexi product line, we'll get more algorithms sooner, faster, better."
The implication, then, is that Nortel's LTE product platform itself will not be commercialized. The acquisition of Nortel's LTE radio access assets will augment NSN's own R&D efforts as a "rapid way to get access to talent and know-how," says Rouanne.
The results of the acquisition could be seen early next year. NSN expects some jointly designed Nortel algorithms to be integrated into its first commercial LTE radio access products, which are scheduled to ship in the first quarter of next year. The products will comply with 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 's March 2009 release of the LTE standard. (See NSN Beefs Up Its Unified Base Station, below)
The algorithms in a cellular base station are essentially the brains of the equipment and, generally, better algorithms yield better system performance.
“NSN’s Flexi base station platform is very software-based,” says Gabriel Brown, senior analyst at Heavy Reading. “Potentially this could make it easier to integrate the Nortel algorithms, assuming a relatively rapid release cycle.”
The Flexi product line is a software-defined, multi-standard base station platform that supports GSM, UMTS, and LTE. The selling point for operators is that getting to LTE, for example, takes just a software upgrade.
Indeed, NSN CEO Simon Beresford-Wylie said on a recent call with the media and analysts that by the end of this year the vendor will have 100,000 base stations installed "just waiting for a software upgrade to LTE." (See LTE Base Station Strategies.)
But why does NSN need Nortel's LTE assets? Unstrung asked Rouanne whether NSN needs the LTE algorithms and software because the Flexi base station isn't up to scratch. His answer: "Absolutely not."
"We have a fully secure and strong product and we want to accelerate that product's capabilities. We want the talent; we want the capability."
The "talent" comprises the 400 engineers dedicated to LTE that NSN will acquire as part of the deal. But since many LTE executives and engineers have already reportedly left Nortel over the first part of this year, that resource may not be what it once was. And NSN's acquisition deal does not include any of Nortel's LTE intellectual property rights -- OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access) and MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) -- which are considered to be the Canadian vendor's crown jewels.
CDMA-to-LTE?
NSN will also acquire Nortel's CDMA business as part of the $650 million deal (which it hopes to close at the end of this month). Also, in one fell swoop, NSN says it will boost its share of the North American wireless infrastructure market from 5 percent to 30 percent, add about $1 billion to its top line, and gain customer relationships with CDMA operators like Verizon Wireless, which are plotting migrations from CDMA to next-generation LTE.
While Rouanne would not comment on Nortel's CDMA products, he says that with the acquisition NSN will become "specialists" in understanding the CDMA-to-LTE migration and "gain insight into how you merge the two networks." ###
>> NSN Beefs Up Its Unified Base Station
Michelle Donegan, (European Editor)
Unstrung
February 5, 2009
unstrung.com
"Use one base station instead of three to support 2G, 3G, and 4G networks." That's what it says on the box for the new Nokia Siemens Networks multi-radio base station that's being announced today.
Ahead of Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry's annual jamboree in Barcelona later this month, the vendor unwrapped its latest Flexi base station product, which has a software-defined multi-radio unit that supports not only UMTS and Long-Term Evolution (LTE), but now GSM, too. Previously, NSN's multi-radio base stations supported only UMTS and LTE.
Such multi-standard radio access network (RAN) products can potentially help operators save on opex and capex costs as they migrate to next-generation broadband technology LTE.
As a result, NSN isn't the only company to have sunk some R&D into the technology -- Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Vanu Inc., and ZTE Corp. are also active in this niche.
But these all-in-one RAN solutions are new territory for operators, and deploying them could be challenging.
"There's always been a performance compromise in the past that's been too heavy to bear," says Heavy Reading senior analyst Gabriel Brown and author of the report, LTE Base Stations & the Evolved Radio Access Network.
"If you can make it work efficiently, there's a big opportunity to save costs," adds Brown
With multi-standard products like NSN's, operators face new network deployment dilemmas over whether to roll out discrete, overlay LTE networks alongside their legacy GSM and UMTS networks, or roll out multi-standard base stations that support LTE as well as the legacy networks. There are pros and cons to both approaches, according to Brown's report.
The overlay approach is the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to roll out LTE. But this would lead to higher overall opex and, in the long-term, higher capex.
The multi-standard RAN scenario would have lower opex, better coordination among the 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, and one backhaul pipe instead of three.
NSN's new multi-standard base station will be commercially available in 2010.
Operators "want the flexibility to use as much of what they have," says Marc Rouanne, head of the vendor's radio access business unit. "Every operator today is asking how LTE is going to make their network evolve in terms of access, transport, and spectrum.
"For us, discussing LTE is discussing higher bit rates and higher spectrum efficiency. Offer operators something that optimizes spectrum efficiency and data rates in an economical manner, and that's all they want."
NSN's LTE credentials include contract wins at NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NYSE: DCM) for base stations and Evolved Packet Core equipment in partnership with, respectively, Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. and Fujitsu Ltd.
In addition, Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD) is putting NSN's equipment through its paces in the joint trial with Verizon Wireless. ###
- Eric - |
