No.3 U.S. mobile carrier T-Mobile – which in April agreed to a merger with Sprint (S.N) to create a more formidable rival to U.S. telecom giants Verizon (VZ.N) and AT&T (T.N) – said the multiyear supply deal with Nokia will deliver the first nationwide 5G services.

The T-Mobile award is critical to Finland’s Nokia, whose results have been battered by years of slowing demand for existing 4G networks and mounting investor doubts over whether 5G contracts can begin to boost profitability later this year.

5G networks promise to deliver faster speeds for mobile phone users and make networks more responsive and reliable for the eventual development of new industrial automation, medical monitoring, driverless car and other business uses.

But cash-strapped telecom operators around the world have been gun-shy over committing to commercial upgrades of existing networks, with many seeing 5G technology simply as a way to deliver incremental capacity increases instead of new features.

Terms of the deal call for Nokia to supply a range of 5G hardware, software and services that will allow T-Mobile to capitalize on licensed airwave to deliver, broad coverage on 600 megahertz spectrum and ultra high-speed capacity on 28 megahertz airwaves in densely trafficked urban areas, the companies said.

Nokia will supply T-Mobile with its AirScale radio access platform along with cloud-connected hardware, software and acceleration services, they said in a statement.

The network equipment business, which is led by three big players – China’s Huawei HWT.UL, Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson (ERICb.ST) – has struggled with flagging growth since the current generation of 4G mobile equipment peaked in 2015.

The post Nokia, T-Mobile US agree $3.5bn deal, world’s first big 5G award appeared first on New Mail Nigeria.

Poised to become the technology and investment hub for Africa – Lagos, Nigeria will play host to the event for the first time, which will see more than 150 regional and international telecom, media and technology leaders, investment bankers, investors, advisers and government representatives meet for a series of panel debates, networking sessions and private roundtable discussions.

“Nigeria is fast becoming one of the most innovative and dynamic places in the world for technology and mobile connectivity, and we are delighted that household names such as Google, Uber, Intel and Africa Internet Group will be represented at the conference alongside some well-known Nigerian tech and media companies such as Sliide, iRoko and Andela, which is backed by Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative,” said Ben Nice, Director, TMT Finance Africa in Lagos.

“However, there are still many challenges that some of these companies face, including a lack of access to adequate financing, which is where TMT Finance Africa in Lagos should help to plug the gap and get the dialogue going between the genuine decision makers,” Nice added.

Leading investment banks will be represented by key institutions such as Standard Bank, Citi, IFC, Barclays, Africa Finance Corporation, Access Bank and FNB, while private equity firms speaking at the conference include: Convergence Partners, African Capital Alliance, ECP and Carlyle.

Over 80 C-level speakers are confirmed for the conference, and only a limited number of tickets are still available.

Innovation and technology investment will form a key part of the agenda, including specific sessions on: Investing in Innovation, eCommerce Africa, Media and Content Strategies, Venture Capital Africa, Connecting the Unconnected, Africa Mobile Payments and Digital Africa.

Follow Us

The post Tech, media leaders meet in Lagos to assess investment and growth strategies appeared first on New Mail Nigeria.

Nokia’s takeover of Alcatel-Lucent will redefine a telecom equipment sector suffering weak growth prospects and pressure from low-cost Chinese players Huawei [HWT.UL] and ZTE.

The combined company will have about 114,000 employees and combined sales of around 26 billion euros. In mobile equipment it will rank a strong second, with global market share of 35 percent, behind Sweden’s Ericsson with 40 percent and ahead of Huawei’s 20 percent, according to Bernstein Research.

The new Nokia will have stronger exposure to the important North American market, with key contracts with AT&T and Verizon.

It will also fill gaps in its product portfolio by getting Alcatel-Lucent’s technology in optical transmission and Internet routers, which help telecom operators handle the ever-increasing volume of data brought on by users surfing the web on their smartphones and watching Netflix at home.

While Huawei does have a complete product line across both fixed and mobile, Ericsson does not and may have to react with deal-making or partnerships, executives said.

Nokia will give Alcatel-Lucent shareholders 0.55 shares in the combined company for each of their old shares, putting 33.5 percent of the entity in Alcatel shareholders’ hands if the tender offer is fully taken up.

The deal will be finalised in the first half of 2016 and is expected to result in 900 million euros of operating cost savings by the end of 2019, the companies said on Wednesday.

Nokia shares rose 1.4 percent at 1149 GMT, while Alcatel-Lucent fell 11.2 percent, reversing trends on Tuesday when the talks were first acknowledged by the companies.

Alcatel shareholders were disappointed because they hoped for a part-cash offer, while Nokia holders were relieved that the group had not overpaid, a trader said.

Nokia initially approached Alcatel-Lucent about buying only the wireless business but was rebuffed, leading to the broader deal, Alcatel boss Michel Combes told Reuters in an interview.

The deal carries significant risks, however. The track record of mergers in the sector – including the two that gave birth to Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent a decade ago – has been poor.

Prior deals were plagued by the difficulty of cutting costs in an R&D intensive business, rivals stealing contracts while the companies were distracted by their integrations, and struggles over power within the married firms.

Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri sought to reassure. “This is not a joint venture, so there will be no governance issues,” he said on a call with investors. We will take a no politics, no nonsense approach to running the business, and have learned from past mistakes.”

Nokia pledged to keep France as “a vibrant center of the combined company” and not to cut jobs beyond what Alcatel had already planned, especially protecting research and development sites at Villarceaux and Lannion.

Alcatel-Lucent has some 6,000 employees in France. Maintaining jobs was a key demand of the French state for its backing of the deal, but that raised concerns over job cuts in Finland where Nokia employs about 6,900.

“At first the deal sounded like very good news. But given that there will likely be job cuts, and the fact that it is much more expensive to lay off people in France than in Finland, the outlook is not that bright anymore,” said Pertti Porokari, the head of Finnish engineers’ union.

“I truly hope that Finnish politicians would also show some patriotism here.”

The Finnish government refrained from demands over job protection but underlined the Nordic country’s know-how in technology.

Nokia sold its once-dominant mobile phone handset business to Microsoft last year after struggling to compete with smartphones by Apple and Samsung. That deal left it with the network unit, a smaller map unit and a portfolio of technology patents.

Nokia said its growth profile would improve from the deal and predicted a sales growth rate of about 3.5 percent for 2014 to 2019. Nevertheless some investors remained concerned.

“The integration will be a difficult task, it will easily take a year or two, and the management group must focus on it heavily. For an investor seeking returns this year, it is clear that Nokia looks less interesting after this move,” said Juha Varis, a fund manager at Danske Capital whose fund owned 0.06 percent of Nokia shares as of end-March.

He also said that leaving France out of the cost-cutting program must have a negative impact to the corporate culture.

Other analysts, however, said that Nokia and CEO Suri have a good record on restructuring.

“There is no reason to doubt that this deal too wouldn’t increase shareholder value… We know that there are risks related to France and the cost cuts, but I believe that Nokia has calculated a margin of safety to the deal price,” said strategist Jukka Oksaharju from Nordnet brokerage.

Separately, Nokia confirmed it was exploring the sale of its HERE mapping unit, which some analysts value at up to 6.9 billion euros. It also said further asset sales could be undertaken once the deal was completed.

Follow Us

The post Nokia buys Alcatel-Lucent appeared first on New Mail Nigeria.

The manufacturing facility, located in the southeastern city of Sriperumbudur, was not included in the sale of the Nokia handset division to US giant Microsoft, completed in April, due to the tax dispute.

A subcontracting arrangement allowed the Finnish group to keep producing mobile phones for the US tech company at the Indian factory, but Nokia said in a statement that Microsoft had informed them that it would terminate this agreement on November 1.

“In absence of further orders from Microsoft, Nokia will suspend handset production at the Sriperumbudur facility,” the group said.

Indian authorities decided in 2013 to seize the plant following a dispute over a multi-billion-dollar tax claim.

“The continuing asset freeze imposed by the tax department prevents Nokia from exploring potential opportunities for the transfer of the factory to a successor,” Nokia said.

The Chennai plant is one of Nokia’s most important factories. The Finnish group said it was trying to find ways to “minimise the impact” of their decision on the employees.

Follow Us

The post Nokia stops production in India appeared first on New Mail Nigeria.