Juniper & Nokia Siemens carrier ethernet JV clears regulatory hurdles

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 09 September 2009 15:07

IT Industry - Strategy

Juniper Networks and Nokia Siemens Networks have received all regulatory approvals needed for their carrier ethernet joint venture, announced in June.

The joint venture will offer a range of carrier ethernet products for mobile backhaul, business and residential broadband networks and will be owned 60 percent by Juniper Networks and 40 percent by Nokia Siemens Networks.
 
John Stewart, previously vice president and general manager of the mobility and circuit emulation business unit at Juniper Networks, will be CEO of the joint venture. Ton van den Boom, previously senior manager in finance and control at Nokia Siemens Networks, will take on the role of CFO.

The company will also have a supervisory board chaired by Manoj Leelanivas, senior vice president and general manager of the edge and aggregation business unit at Juniper Networks. Bernd Schumacher, head of broadband connectivity solutions at Nokia Siemens Networks, will serve as vice chairman.
 
"The Juniper-NSN joint venture will offer the industry's best unified carrier ethernet solution from metro access to aggregation, fully interoperable with IP/MPLS core and managed by Nokia Siemens Networks 'point and click' network management system," said Stewart. "Our customers will be able to leverage the solution to offer new revenue-generating services while lowering transport costs and total cost of ownership."

The joint product range will consist of Juniper Networks MX Series ethernet services routers and Nokia Siemens Networks' A-series carrier ethernet switches and end-to-end network management system. The joint venture will integrate these components into "a seamless and fully-tested end-to-end solution."
 
The plans call for these joint products to be sold by both companies with a targeted introduction date of the first calendar quarter of 2010.

The JV was announced in June and followed the announcement in February of their plans for the same joint  offerings but with no mention of a JV. The two companies already had a long-standing partnership that encompassed IP aggregation, edge and core products and they claimed to have sold products to more than 200 service provider networks around the world.

Shortly after announcing the JV they announced yet another tie up - a plan to combine their respective optical and IP networking technologies, including the development of 10G, 40G and 100G IP over DWDM products with management integration and GMPLS control plane interworking.