CDMA

Motorola’s LTE win: A reversal of fortune?

Motorola’s financial struggles have been much more public than its LTE wireless broadband capabilities of late, but its first public LTE win may help reverse the headlines if handled well.

KDDI Corp., Japan’s second-largest wireless operator, chose Motorola’s Home & Network Mobility unit to be a key development partner for its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. The win gives Motorola’s LTE capabilities more credibility when going up against other LTE vendors, including Ericsson, which recently won the bid for Nortel’s LTE assets.

The Motorola contract may be larger than $1 billion, according to analyst reports, although KDDI previously announced it could spend about $5.3 billion for a nationwide LTE network. Questions are floating about whether Motorola’s win is tied to a low pricing strategy. Japan’s NEC also won a KDDI contract to supply LTE equipment. KDDI launched its CDMA network with Motorola as its primary vendor, so Motorola has traction with the provider.

Motorola’s role is to implement the basic LTE infrastructure and base stations. KDDI hopes to launch its LTE service by December 2012, which still puts it in a trailing second place to NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest wireless operator that plans to launch LTE service a full two years earlier, at the end of 2010.

Motorola is also conducting LTE trials with China Mobile Ltd.

RIM’s Nortel interest adds more drama to ‘final’ bid

Why on earth would RIM want Nortel? That was the question on everyone’s minds after the handset manufacturer announced it had not only tried to enter bidding for the distressed Nortel’s LTE and CDMA assets, but had been “prevented” from fairly competing for those assets due to bidding restrictions.

And while Ericsson eventually emerged victorious in bidding, industry watchers were left scratching their heads, and legislators seem to at least be considering the merits of RIM’s complaint. What if the Waterloo-based BlackBerry maker was successful in a re-auction and it won?

The company has given little indication of why they are so intent on the Nortel wireless assets, beyond the stated desire to keep Nortel Canadian, but RIM does have experience in building out some infrastructure in order to power its central NOC. Perhaps the company has seen infrastructure as a critical competitive asset, and one that will further separate it from the pack just as its e-mail advantage has in the past. Another theory is that RIM is trying to jump on the LTE bandwagon early, and it sees the Nortel opportunity as the perfect way to jump past its competitors in this area.

Whatever the motivation, with Canadian national pride and billions of dollars in local jobs at stake, the supposedly final Ericsson purchase might not be so final after all.

Nortel wireless fire sale delivers North American footprint to NSN

Nortel’s wireless carrier network infrastructure division may bring in a paltry $650 million if the Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) deal goes through. By all accounts, NSN — the joint venture of Nokia Corp and Siemens AG — will be getting a really good deal out of Nortel’s bankruptcy. The deal sets a low bar, according to The Wall Street Journal, which is pretty clear, considering Nortel was once valued at $250 billion.

NSN stands to gain Nortel’s CDMA and LTE assets. Nortel’s CDMA unit earned $700 million a year – and that was while it was in decline, according to WSJ. The big 4G LTE migration is supposed to start next year, and NSN is gathering firepower for that.

Continued »

Sprint’s femtocell wholesale move – hoping for wireless for all takers

For an interesting spin on who sells services to whom, Sprint will begin wholesaling femtocell solutions to wireless resale partners that include mobile virtual network operators (MNVOs), as well as its wireline brethren, which means landline telecom service providers and particularly cable companies that want to offer quadruple-play services and provide wireless coverage inside customer’s homes.

Continued »