Nokia Siemens Networks announced two significant broadband wireless infrastructure wins in Asia Pacific, one for LTE in Singapore and the other for HSPA+ in Thailand.
StarHub tapped NSN as its LTE infrastructure and service vendor. The Singaporean operator planning to refarm its 1800 MHz frequencies from GSM to LTE and said it will introduce LTE before year's end in prominent business areas that include the Singapore Changi Airport, Marina Bay, Suntec and Shenton Way.
StarHub will deploy NSN's Single RAN platform, built around Flexi multi-radio base stations, which will enable StarHub to run GSM and LTE concurrently on the 1800 MHz band. NSN is also supplying its Evolved Packet Core platform, including the Flexi NS (Network Server) and Flexi NG (Network Gateway).
At the Mobile World Congress held during February in Barcelona, NSN's booth prominently promoted the company's customer experience management (CEM) products. The vendor's efforts in that area are paying off as StarHub will use NSN's software for policy and charging rules function as well as its One-NDS subscriber data management. NSN is also supplying its NetAct network management system and a bevy of support services.
In addition, NSN is charged with modernizing StarHub's existing GSM infrastructure, with an aim toward slashing the network equipment's power consumption by up to 50 percent.
NSN also announced a supply contract with TOT in Thailand, where the state-owned operator intends to upgrade its current 3G network to HSPA+42 this month. NSN is providing a solution based upon dual-carrier HSDPA technology, NSN's Flexi multi-radio base station and the 3G Radio Network Multicontroller (RNC). The vendor will also deploy its Liquid Core's COTS ATCA-based Open Mobile Switching Server (MSS). NSN said the MSS and multi-radio base stations will enable a smooth transition to LTE whenever TOT opts to take that route.
Other products NSN is supplying to TOT include its NetAct network management system and a location-based services platform as well as network planning, implementation and optimization services, plus services for operations support and training.
NSN has been on a roll of late and just topped the LTE base station vendor matrix released by ABI Research. The matrix is not a hard count of the number of LTE base stations deployed, but is a composite of several factors related to LTE base stations, including commercial contracts and contributions of essential intellectual property. According to ABI, Nokia Siemens took the top spot because of its momentum on contracts, contributions to essential IP for LTE and its initiatives in small cells.
According to ABI, Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent (NASDAQ: ALU) followed NSN on the matrix rankings.
For more:
- see this NSN release
- see this other NSN release
- see this ABI release
- see this Telegeography article
- see this Total Telecom article
- see this Cellular-News article
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