Nokia Siemens sees 'significant' deal announcements

Company strengthens R&D centre in Bangalore

Telecom network solutions provider Nokia Siemens Networks said the company is seeing very good traction in the Indian market as telecom services providers continue with their expansion plans in line with the growth of the industry. The Finnish company, which employs over 12,000 people in India, with leading telcos including Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel and Tata Docomo as its customers, is gearing up to play a major role in the Indian market by clinching newer deals and preparing it for the future as and when the 3G roll-out happens.

“We have made significant deal announcements during the slowdown adding a number of new customers like Uninor, Tata Docomo, other than extending our relationships with the existing ones. We had a good momentum in deal making and in the rollout of our services. Keeping this in view, we are augmenting our capacity in India in line with our investment plans made in 2007,” said Urs Pennanen, head, India operations, Nokia Siemens.

Nokia Siemens Networks has, meanwhile, consolidated its office space in Bangalore by setting up a large R&D centre in the city capable of accommodating about 3,000 people. About 2,300 R&D engineers who were located in smaller centres in Bangalore would henceforth be located out of this facility. Engineers at the site develop, test and deliver software to support the world’s telecoms networks.

With over 500 million mobile subscribers, India is one of the fastest-growing mobile market in the world. The last one year has seen a lot of new cellular service providers launching their services in the country. This has also resulted in huge investments in the telecom infrastructure space which has thrown up big opportunities before companies who provides telecom infrastructure.

According to Pennanen, Nokia Siemens Networks rolls out more than 5,000 base stations in India every month and has an installed base of more than 170,000 base stations.

Presently, over 150 million mobile phone subscribers in India use services powered by Nokia Siemens Networks. Apart from having its R&D centre in India, Nokia Siemens Networks also works with a few R&D partners in India including Wipro, TCS, Aricent and IBM.