New alliance releases plans

Rajeev Suri, head of the Asia-Pacific region of Nokia Siemens Networks, said the firm's focus will be on radio access, broadband access, service core and applications, IP networking and transport, operations support systems and services that provide a full range of products and applications for fixed, mobile and converged networks.

He said around five billion people would always be connected globally in 2015, enabling operators to capture new business opportunities. He expects around one billion people in Asia-Pacific to be connected in 2010 and around 1.4 billion by 2015. Mobile subscribers would grow by 25 per cent. India and Indonesia are the largest growth countries for Internet connections.

"Nokia Siemens Networks has the capability to bring innovation to its customers. We have a company culture that values speed, flexibility, integrity and results over hierarchy," said Suri.

He said the company had a variety of innovative technologies to support the next generation of networks such as the world's first Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio access system, HSPA (high speed packet access) and Village Connections.

LTE enables fixed access and research teams were able to transmit data at a rate of 10 gigabits per second over an optical access network, which is four times faster than the rate previously possible.

The firm also demonstrated M1's HSPA which is a wireless broadband service at speeds of 10.8 Mbps per site, up from 3.6 Mbps. It allows M1's HSPA network to increase its data speeds, resulting in a three-fold downlink capacity increase in the network.

The HSPA system provides cost-effective and faster rollouts. It enhances mobile broadband with two key technologies, HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) and HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) enabling data speeds of up to 42 Mbps for the downlink, and up to 11 Mbps for the uplink.

The Village Connection brings affordable GSM connectivity to rural villages in new growth markets. It offers a way to build rural connectivity village by village, enabling an innovative franchise-based business model between an operator and local village entrepreneurs. It supports GSM-based voice and SMS services, including roaming and connection to the outside world. A village would host one access point module comprising GSM radio, power and IT hardware and software components.

"The Village Connection allows the transfer of responsibility for network and business functions to a local level, building cost-effective connectivity village by village. It can employ local people to manage access within each village, or local entrepreneurs may license the mobile-access rights for their surrounding area. It will be available in 2008," said Suri.

He said the Village Connection is a part of a broader plan to work with customers and connect five billion people globally by 2015. It also enables operators to extend their reach to remote villages, where a traditional technology would fail.

"An estimated two billion people live in approximately two million villages in emerging markets globally. Many villagers are in need of basic telephony - to call doctors for instance. We hope to make affordable mobile connections available to the market," said Suri.

Nokia Siemens Networks is among the top 10 companies investing in research and development in the world and top in the telecommunications industry.

The firm operates in over 150 countries in seven regions with over 20,000 service professionals dealing with over 600 customers.

Jirapan Boonnoon

The Nation

Singapore