Mumbai too is within Nokia range for new hub

MUMBAI: Nokia is looking for another location in India to replicate the managed services network hub to ensure business continuity as part of its disaster management plan. Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon and Bangalore are among the destinations that are under consideration. “The final choice will depend of costs as well the availability of engineering talent,” said sources.

Apart from Hutchison, the Chennai hub will be servicing three more international telcos, including Swedish company 3GIS. “It also has two more deals in the pipeline, one with an Indonesian operator and another with an European telecom operator,” sources said.

Nokia already manages 3GIS’s network in Europe. 3G Infrastructure Services (3GIS) is a joint venture between two Swedish operators, Hi3G Access and Vodafone Sweden that provides a shared UMTS network.

While managing of networks has been done in India by the information technology (IT) companies in the past, the Nokia hub marks the outsourcing of another kind of service, that of managed services, to India of telecom carrier networks.

“Managed services business has taken off in a big way in India,” said Alok Shende, director, ICT, Frost & Sullivan. Leading telcos like Bharti and Hutchison actually serve as examples for managed services for other telcos in the world.

As costs of telecom equipment decline, vendors are increasingly looking at managing the networks of their clients and other value added services to beef up their margins. India was chosen for its wide pool of engineering talent as well as the availability of software skills, particularly in areas like analytics. “Managed services help telcos to bring down costs and increase profitability,” said Mr Shende.

While the exact size of the Nokia deal for managing the networks of Hutchison Essar in 10 more circles in the country could not be ascertained, but it is estimated to be in the region of Rs 300 crore for the managed services business, according to analysts.