Addressing press and industry analysts at the 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks, outlined the progress the company made in 2010, as well as providing insight into where the mobile industry will focus in 2011. In particular, Suri highlighted the industry’s shift in focus to customer experience in an increasingly complex ecosystem.
“It isn’t news anymore that the mobile data explosion continues to accelerate, but while our competitors are still focused merely on volume, we have shifted to address complexity,” Suri said. “We continue to lead the industry in smart networks, and this year we’re showing how operators must use their end-to-end view of people’s connectivity to add value and bring an overall better experience.”
Suri outlined the challenges facing mobile operators as they deal with ever-increasing complexity, including a huge number of different access networks, multi-tasking devices, and applications.
“If you want to look at where operators will start to spend more money, just look to the world of customer experience. When we survey our customers, more than 82% list improving customer experience as their highest priority.”
The advantages Nokia Siemens Networks says it can bring to these operators include managing network quality end-to-end and, more importantly, guaranteeing the service level for any given application. This opens up opportunities for operators to partner with content providers to generate incremental revenue streams, it says.
At a tactical level, Suri explained that in 2011 the company’s Smart Labs in Helsinki, Dallas, Madrid and Seoul will continue to be vital for testing all major smart devices, operating systems and application types, managing customer experience and operator expectations.
In addition, as markets with limited spectrum look towards 4G, Suri highlighted the role TD-LTE will play. “If you look at how to deliver mobile broadband, there is a huge amount of unpaired spectrum available, and new TD bands will open as frequencies are freed-up. While TD-LTE has its roots in China, it is very much a global technology. The right band is now licensed for TD-LTE in around 40 countries and the ecosystem is clearly accelerating.”
In reviewing accomplishments over the last year in the company’s three strategic focus areas – mobile broadband, managed services and subscriber centric solutions – Suri outlined the progress the company has made.
In mobile broadband, Nokia Siemens Networks says it won more deals with more customers than any of its competitors, and pioneered new technologies such as iHSPA, Long Term HSPA Evolution, and LTE Self-Organizing Networks. In 2010 it won 25 new 3G customers, more than any other vendor, and has the highest number of WCDMA customers at 193, positioning it strongly in a market not expected to peak until 2020. In LTE, Nokia Siemens Networks has signed 31 commercial contracts to date, again the most in the industry, it says.
For three years in a row the company says it has recorded strong growth in Managed Services, with 65 new contracts in 2010. In Subscriber-centric Solutions, the company says its performance has been good, growing in key areas such as insight and experience (which includes subscriber data management) and security.