Sprint Nextel is in final negotiations to outsource the management of its mobile Ericsson, according to the Wall Street Journal. Reports concerning negotiations first surfaced in March in a Swedish newspaper, Affarsvarlden. If the deal goes through, it will be worth around $2 billion over ‘several’ years and 5,000 of Sprint’s 7,000 workforce would become Ericsson’s employees. It is hoped such a deal could save Spring 20% pa in operating costs.
The WSJ reckons Sprint lost 1 million contract subscribers in Q1.
The Spanish Operators Association for Mobile Number Portability has chosen IT services provider Indra to develop and implement a new platform, designed to streamline and centralize the country's mobile number portability system, according to Spain’s Europa Press.
The new portability system is scheduled for launch in February 2010, reports. As part of the €4.7 million contract, Indra run the portability service for three years, leveraging its network of data-processing centres. Spain currently has four mobile network operators and 26 MVNOs.
Subodh Bapat, vice-president at Sun Microsystems, told The Guardian, "We need more data centres, we need more servers. Each server burns more Watts than the previous generation and each Watt costs more," he said. "If you compound all of these trends, you have the perfect storm."
With more than 1.5 billion people online around the world, scientists estimate that the energy footprint of the net is growing by more than 10% each year, according to the newspaper. Energy costs are escalating because of increasing popularity, while advertising revenues are under pressure from the recession.
Recent analysis by Credit Suisse suggested that YouTube, heavily subsidised by owner Google, could lose as much as $470 million this year, due to the high price of delivering power-intensive videos, the report said.