NSN sells fixed-wireless broadband business

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has sold its fixed-wireless broadband business as it continues with its restructuring programme. The vendor announced that privately held Spanish firm, CN Tetragen, has bought the business, although no financial terms were disclosed.

Under the terms of the transaction, CN Tetragen will acquire the complete Expedience portfolio, assets, and the active customer and supplier contracts. The Spanish holding group has set up a company called Nexpedience Networks to operate the Expedience assets.

“With this acquisition, we are in a good position to ensure continuity for the manufacturing of the Expedience technology while developing a solid roadmap for its future. We are extremely committed to achieving this,” said Kiriako Vergos, chairman and CEO of CN Tetragen.

Stephan Scholz, head of divestment projects for network systems at NSN added that customers will benefit from the greater focus, scale and concentration on Expedience that CN Tetragen can offer.

“The divestment is part of Nokia Siemens Networks new strategy where we’ll focus on mobile broadband and services,” he said.

NSN acquired the Expedience portfolio as part of its acquisition of Motorola Solutions networks assets that closed in April 2011. Expedience is a proprietary wireless broadband platform, and to date more than 15,000 base stations and 700,000 CPEs have been sold worldwide.

The news comes just a day after NSN announced that it will outsource a portion of its own activities to Tieto, while the conclusion of one of its own outsourcing deals, with Brazilian mobile operator Oi, has allowed it to cut another 3,500 workers from its roster. The firms also sold its broadband access unit to US firm Adtran late last year.

NSN announced plans to cut 17,000 workers in November 2011.