Future lies in “smart networks for smart devices”

Nokia Siemens Networks’ CEO outlines telecoms transformation, also confirms unsolicited interest in company from private equity.

Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks, today outlined the company’s commitment to transforming mobile networks to cope with the explosion in smart devices. This commitment includes the creation of a “Smartphone Experience Lab” based in Telefónica premises in Madrid. Speaking at the 24th annual Spanish telecoms summit in Santander, Suri also took the opportunity to confirm that Nokia Siemens Networks had received unsolicited expressions of interest from private equity firms due to its recent business momentum.

“Smartphones are taking off everywhere, and Spain happens to be one of the fastest growing markets, outpacing Germany, Sweden, the UK and US,” Suri said. “Networks need to transform - now - to cope with the huge amounts of signalling and data traffic smart devices generate. Our approach is the only one that can cope with this explosion, while preparing operators for the fast-approaching roll-out of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.”

In reference to news that Nokia Siemens Networks has received enquiries from private equity firms seeking to invest, Suri said, “I take this unsolicited interest as a testament to the progress we are making.”

Suri noted that the company’s turnaround was well underway, with share gains in key segments, established leadership in next generation technologies such as LTE, improved financial performance, landmark new deals and its recent move to acquire the wireless infrastructure assets of Motorola.

Suri was addressing an audience of telecoms policy makers and business leaders in Santander, Spain on the unique challenges that the sudden proliferation of smart devices poses to mobile operators. Many always-on smartphone apps generate eight times as much signalling traffic as laptops with mobile connections. This can overload network elements so that they no longer support additional data or voice calls, degrading network quality. This phenomenon can be seen in many smartphone-heavy networks around the world and, unless addressed, could become increasingly common.

Expectations of smartphone users are also rising as a generation raised on always-on fixed broadband reach independence and expect to be connected wherever they are. As an example, of the current 500 million active users on Facebook, already more than 150 million use a mobile device to access the service, and these mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users.*

“Finding ways to support the 10,000 percent increase in smartphone generated data traffic by 2015 is vital for operators worldwide,” explains Suri.

Nokia Siemens Networks has recently completed the London Experience Project with, optimizing Telefónica O2’s network by minimizing the signalling load. It has now been independently verified** as the fastest mobile broadband network in London.

Suri also confirmed that Nokia Siemens Networks was working with Telefónica and Nokia on a joint initiative. The Smartphone Experience Lab was recently started in Telefónica premises in Madrid with its objective to find the ideal configuration between mobile handsets, applications and networks to minimize any negative network impact from smart devices, improve resource consumption as well as better handset and application performance, and to ultimately provide people with the best possible user experience. The outcomes from the Lab’s activities will include guidelines on the optimum network and handset configurations and application development.

The Smartphone Experience Lab comes under the scope of Telefónica’s overall smartphone activities, aimed at: improving customer experience when using smartphone applications, and anticipating, as far as possible, potential future issues due to new behaviour patterns caused by smartphones and related applications. To achieve its aims, Telefónica is closely working with third parties such as network and device vendors, including Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia, as well as other operators.