Nokia Siemens close to fourth LTE deal

Nokia Siemens Networks is on the verge of announcing a fourth LTE deal, according to CEO Rajeev Suri, which would give the struggling equipment vendor some cause for optimism in what has been a tough year.

Company spokesman Kent Tankersley would not say when Nokia Siemens would announce the deal nor which operator the deal was with. He also did not specify whether the deal involved a radio access network or a core network. Thus far, NSN has won LTE radio access deals with NTT DoCoMo, Zain Bahrain and Telenor Denmark; the company also is a supplier of Verizon Wireless' IMS network for its LTE buildout, alongside Alcatel-Lucent.

This has been a dismal year for Nokia Siemens from a sales standpoint; the company has seen declines in revenue in each quarter of 2009 compared with 2008. Further, Huawei passed Nokia Siemens as the world's second largest vendor in terms of market share in the third quarter, according to research firm Dell'Oro. As a result, Nokia Siemens in November said it may cut as many as 5,760 jobs as part of a broad restructuring and cost-cutting program.

Suri sought to quell concerns about the company's future, and remained confident that Nokia Siemens would outpace a flat mobile infrastructure market.

"Reports of our death are not only greatly exaggerated, but they are totally false," he said, according to Light Reading. "We are winning where it matters."

For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article (sub. req.)
- see this Light Reading article

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