Nokia Siemens to manage VHA's network for seven years

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 06 May 2010 15:59

IT Industry - Deals

Vodafone Hutchison Australia has chosen to outsource management of its network operations to Nokia Siemens Networks under a seven-year agreement. Nokia Siemens will also supply equipment to upgrade VHA's core network, but VHA has made no announcement on a supplier for its radio network.

A VHA spokeswoman told iTWire that RFP responses were still being evaluated and there was no timeframe for an announcement.

Nokia Siemens has a long-standing relationship with Vodafone as its network equipment supplier and the manager of its network while Hutchison's network was supplied and managed by Ericsson.

Under the new management contract Nokia Siemens will be required to consolidate the operation and management of the Vodafone and Hutchison core networks, along with valued added services, business support systems, and network operations. Nokia Siemens will also manage a number of VHA's third-party providers. The agreement comes into effect immediately.

For the VHA core network, Nokia Siemens will provide its Flexi Network Gateway (Flexi NG) packet core platform and will expand the mobile softswitch (MSS) and home location register (HLR) previously supplied to Vodafone to enable VHA to evolve towards a single database for all its subscriber information.

VHA is also in the process of finding an organisation to manage its IT services, The spokeswoman told iTWire: :The scope of work for our IT managed services is currently being reviewed that includes the billing and provisioning and service application. For Hutchison that is all managed by Ericsson. For Vodafone there are multiple partners, including IBM.