After announcing a major overhaul of its business, Nokia Siemens Networks announced it sold its WiMAX business--which it inherited from its acquisition of Motorola Solutions network business--to lesser-known company NewNet Communication Technologies, which is backed by private equity firm Skyview Capital.
While NSN did not disclose the value of the deal, the sale will see the transfer of its entire WiMAX product portfolio, R&D capabilities, active customers and supplier contracts across to NewNet. The deal is expected to close by year-end. NSN's WiMAX customers include Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR).
NewNet, which sells signalling, messaging and media delivery systems for mobile operators, will also absorb the 300 employees dedicated to NSN's WiMAX business that are based in Chicago and Hangzhou, China. It's unclear what NewNet plans to do with the WiMAX business. Other WiMAX vendors such as Alvarion are diversifying themselves as WiMAX operators migrate to LTE.
NSN announced earlier this month it would eliminate 17,000 positions by 2013 for a total cost savings of $1.3 billion. The company said the action will include the "elimination of the company's matrix organizational structure, site consolidation, transfer of activities to global delivery centers, consolidation of certain central functions, cost synergies from the integration of Motorola's wireless assets, efficiencies in service operations, and company-wide process simplification."
NSN closed on its $975 million acquisition of Motorola's networking business in August. The net result of the moves: NSN will become a smaller, more nimble company with lower costs and a sharper focus on fewer product lines.
NSN has been moving toward becoming a mobile broadband-only vendor via its new base-station and network architecture concepts. In September, the vendor introduced Liquid Net, a network concept designed to turn a traditional mobile network into software-driven network capable of self adapting to network loads. In February, NSN introduced its Liquid Radio base stations that uses distributed antennae and virtualized baseband processing to provide a highly distributed architecture built around small cells and miniature base-station designs.
For more:
- see this release
- see this Reuters article
- see this Telegeography article
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