Although there has been some movement toward mobile network outsourcing in the U.S. market--in July 2009 Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) inked a $5 billion network outsourcing deal with Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC)--much of the growth in outsourcing is happening in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. And according to new research from Infonetics, the network outsourcing trend is becoming so appealing to mobile operators that it is growing faster with mobile networks than with fixed line networks.
In fact, by 2014 the firm expects mobile network outsourcing to account for about 61 percent of all network outsourcing. The company also said that by year-end approximately $53.5 billion worth of networking tasks will be outsourced to equipment vendors, an increase of 8 percent over 2009. Equipment vendors such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel-Lucent (NASDAQ:ALU) and Huawei will be the primary beneficiaries of this trend, and Infonetics predicts these firms may end up running three-quarters of telecom networks globally.
Infonetics also said most outsourcing contracts are for network maintenance, planning, design and operations.
For more:
- see this release
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