By Bo Gowan
25 March 2008
1:45 pm EDT
One of the new wireless wins that I mentioned in my previous post was a $100 million contract to provide GSM wireless infrastructure to BSNL in India.
While a $100 million contract is always good news, this particular contract has an interesting history to it. Nortel previously won a GSM deployment with BSNL at the end of 2004. At the time of the announcement, Nortel highlighted that we would lose money on the deal, but that it was “an important strategic investment” for Nortel to establish a footprint in India’s fast-growing market.
Over the next year, that loss increased as implementation costs came in higher than expected. By the end of 2005, Nortel was generally being criticized all around for taking such a …
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By Bo Gowan
25 March 2008
12:45 pm EDT
Next week is another big wireless trade show, CTIA Wireless 2008 in Las Vegas. As part of the ramp-up for that event, Nortel today issued several press releases on new wireless contract wins.
This morning Nortel announced a new 5-year CDMA contract with U.S. Cellular, the nations 6th largest mobile operator with over 6 million customers. U.S. Cellular has been a Nortel wireless customer since the mid-1980s, and has been deploying Nortel CDMA equipment since 2002 (with past announcements here and here). In addition to equipment, the contract also includes emergency technical support, spares management, software patch management, performance monitoring and other services from Nortel’s Global Services portfolio.
Also today, Nortel …
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