Nokia taps Aussie firm for multi service access technology

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 07 November 2006 14:37

IT Industry - Deals

Nokia is merging its communications infrastructure business with that of Siemens. Tutty said there was no overlap with the product lines of that business but "there is every possibility that our products will make their way into that relationship."

Haliplex was founded in 1999 and is privately owned. It is backed by the founders of Datacraft, George Kepper and Wayne Fitzsimmons. It has about 20 employees and does not disclose sales numbers or revenue.

Despite is success overseas, it has made little headway in the Australian market because of what Tutty called an entrenched culture of a governmental model. "There is a lot of emphasis on due diligence at the expense of commercial reality and that does not serve to find the best technologies, even if they are five years ahead at a fraction of the price."

He claimed that the Haliplex product could have made "an incredible impact" on Australian DSLAM rollouts, but said the company was not aggressively pursuing opportunities in the Australian market.  "You don't want to be working on changing a culture when you are just trying to sell a product. So we spend our time were it will pay off and that is in Europe and the US where they just look at the technology and say 'this is the beset fit'."