Telecoms infrastructure

Telecoms infrastructure provider Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) will build a network operations center (NOC) in Latin America following a contract just signed with Latin American digital trunking operator NII Holdings (Nasdaq: NIHD), Jackson Brenner, NSN's head of NII business in Latin America, told BNamericas.
Under the terms of the five-year contract, whose value Brenner was unable to disclose, NSN will manage all of NII's network operations throughout Latin America, where it operates under the Nextel brand.
"We have a global NOC in Portugal and two in India, and now the idea is to establish a global operations center in Latin America, because of issues with language, etc. Initially we'd work with Nextel, and we have other managed services projects with Oi and TIM in Brazil," he said. "We still haven't defined where exactly, but because of the volume we're looking at the NOC will be located in Mexico or Brazil."
Nokia Siemens Networks will combine its expertise with the experience of NII employees that will transfer to the company to plan, design, build, maintain, optimize and operate NII's networks, with the goal of enhancing NII's operational efficiency. Some 1,000 employees of NII and its operating companies are expected to become NSN employees. According to Brenner, there will be no job cuts; "in fact, we're betting on expansion because the Nextel plan is also for growth, working with new technology and new networks."
"The idea of this business is to allow Nextel to optimize costs, where our experience with managed services will be applied to Nextel's operations. We'll also migrate their networks towards third generation. Nextel plans to migrate its network in all of Latin America. It already has the [3G] licenses in Peru and Chile and will do the same in other countries like Brazil and Mexico," he added. "They'll continue with iDEN technology, but are investing in 3G to complement their portfolio of services."
NSN will assume responsibility for day-to-day services, provisioning and maintenance for NII-owned networks, including operations, network planning and optimization, consulting and OSS/BSS integration as well as multi-vendor maintenance services. Nextel will remain with full control of its assets but focus on the commercial aspects of its business.
"This is one of the most complete cases of outsourcing that we've seen on a global level," said Brenner, adding that the deal does not affect in any way any possible commercial negotiations with other external companies. NII has chosen not to comment on Mexican broadcast giant Televisa's proposing to acquire part of Nextel Mexico's operations.
NII operates in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Chile, and ended 3Q09 with US$2bn in cash and total debt of US$2.8bn. The company will have a conference call on Q4 results on February 25.