Nigeria shines @ AfricaCom’11

The 14th edition of the AfricaCom ended in the city of Cape Town, South Africa recently, with some Nigerian companies participating actively in the three-day event, wrapped up with accolades.

Leading the pack were MTN, Etisalat and MainOne companies, who were adjudged notable enterprises in various capacities.

For Etisalat Nigeria, the outline of its major Capital and Operational expenditures (CAPEX and OPEX) respectively stood the mobile operator out in reduction of its expenditure profile.

According to the Chief Executive Officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Steven Evans, the major initiatives which operators could take to reduce Capital and Operational expenditure (CAPEX and OPEX) and benefit the customers and could result in reductions of tariffs, increased coverage of networks as well as greater profitability for the operators has been the top secret of the mobile operator survival strategy in Nigeria.

He also said, during his presentation entitled ‘Operator Strategies to reduce CAPEX and OPEX in Africa’, that the company has already undertaken a number of major CAPEX and OPEX reduction initiatives such as co-location and hybrid power and was actively considering others like transmission sharing and sales and leaseback of towers.

In the Commercial arena, he said, Etisalat has also embarked on a number of operational efficiency initiatives such as optimizing retail outlet formats and migrating to over the air recharges for prepaid customers.

At Etisalat, he noted, the aim has been to develop ways of making more efficient use of available resources to achieve the best results.

“For instance, we have been propounding the philosophy of co-location in Nigeria and are happy to say that we have made significant progress with one of the other major operators in the country,” he declared, stressing that this has given rise to an extensive co-location agreement and a good deal for both parties and the country in general.

This, he further said, has led to a reduction of resources channeled to erecting new towers and the opportunity to cover more communities and areas.

Evans observed that tower sale and leaseback as an excellent way of releasing capital to invest in core activities such as customer acquisition, management and retention as well as increasing the number of significant tower deals by African tower companies.

“Operators in the telecommunications industry are not required to own their towers in order to have effective operations. Towers can be owned and managed by third party specialist tower companies. A major advantage of this is that capital is saved and re-invested in the growth of business, network expansion and improved services” he said.

For MainOne it was a shared glory as it jointly won the ‘Best Pan African Initiative’ at AfricaCom Awards 2011 with SeaCom.

Both MainOne and SeaCom, were seen as the only two privately funded and open-access based African submarine fibre optic cable systems.

The award, ITRealms Online gathered, recognises an initiative taken by an organisation or a group of organisations to improve telecommunications services at a regional or continental level.

Responding to the award, the chief executive officer of MainOne, Ms Funke Opeke, pointed out that through this partnership, Main One and SeaCom have extended their individual cable systems to the opposite coasts of Africa without the efforts required to construct brand new routes.

“The ability to connect the east and west coast of the continent directly results in improved throughput but also provides a system around most of the continent which provides improved redundancy for telecommunications operators,” she said.

And for the her SeaCom counterpart, Mr. Mark Simpson, it is an honour to be recognised once again for the efforts in continuously extending pan-African connectivity by investing in infrastructure, products and services that meet the continent’s insatiable demand for bandwidth.

“This partnership shows our determination to find viable ways to extend our system with partners who share our vision of building the African Internet on an open and equitable basis,” he said.

ITRealms Online recalled that Main One and SeaCom had proclaimed in May 2011 that they had interconnected their west and east African cable systems to launch capacity services from Point of Presence (PoP) to PoP, from a Synchronous Transport Module level-1 (STM-1) and above.

While POP is an interface between telecommunication entities as a telephony system term, the STM-1 is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) fiber optic network transmission standard with a bit rate of 155.52 Mbit/s.

This partnership, experts noted, extends the MainOne and SeaCom networks to create a system that offers connection between any SeaCom and MainOne PoPs all around Africa.

Now in its fourth year, the awards are a serious recognition of the commitment and professionalism of these finalists to their core business and to changing the landscape of the continent, for the better.

And for the leading mobile operator on the continent, MTN Group which has its largest footprint in the country was recognised for its innovation and market leadership, emerging with two awards from the AfricaCom 2011.

Even as MTN South Africa received awards for the ‘Best Network Improvement’, for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) pilot test in Gauteng province and ‘Best Marketing Campaign (dubbed Bow Wow) for MTN Zone.

Responding, the Chief Marketing Officer for MTN South Africa, Mr. Serame Taukobong, said the mobile operator’s ecstatic has once again gained this important recognition with these awards, which she dedicated to thousands of MTN employees, its partners and customers who shared the MTN vision.

“The accolades are further affirmation from the industry and our customers that we are on the right track and need to cement the work we have been doing to provide our customers with the seamless experience they have come to expect from MTN,” he said.

MTN was also shortlisted for six of the eleven awards categories, with MTN South Africa vying for four awards, namely, Best Network Improvement Award, Changing Lives Award, Customer Service Excellence Awards and Best Marketing Campaign. MTN Group was shortlisted for the Best Pan Africa Initiative for Mtnfootball.com, while MTN Nigeria and MTN Uganda & Alvarion were nominated for the Rural Telecoms Award for their Rural Telephony Business and Rural Internet Cafes projects respectively.

“We are immensely proud of the two awards received by MTN South Africa. In the same vein, we are equally filled with pride to have been shortlisted for a total of six awards across four areas of our business. For MTN, these awards are an important recognition of the tireless efforts put in by MTNers and our partners across the continent to bridge the digital divide in the countries we operate,” said Christian De Faria, Group Chief Commercial Officer.

Remmy Nweke

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Are mobile networks going bananas?

The rate of unsuccessful calls being experienced by telecom consumers in the country has been on the rise in recent months and inability to meet the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) set by NCC. REMMY NWEKE asks in this report if poor quality of service has become irredeemable?

Nowadays, making calls in the country across all the networks seem a hills task. This has become unbecoming since the provable commemoration of the 10 years of Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), which commenced on August 2011.

At first, it was like the normal hiccups, thereby lasting for days, weeks and now months without appreciable improvement, thus necessitating the telecommunication industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to issue a direction to the major operators, namely MTN, Glo and Airtel.

Investigations revealed that it now takes an average of five to 10 minutes to initiate a successful call rather than less than a second of pressing a button, while those at the rural areas are no go areas, when it comes to trying to make a successful call, which require multiple redialing with frivolous voice responses that tell whoever cares that the ‘Number you  are trying to reach is out of the network coverage areas.’ Even when the call destination ‘receiver’ may have flashed a call in the first instance.

ITRealms Online recalls that NCC had warned the trio of MTN, Glo and Airtel to improve the quality of services on their respective networks or face sanction, saying it may stop the three major mobile operators, from further sell of SIM Cards by end of November 2011, if they fail to meet with the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) set by NCC.

Head, Media and Public Relations at NCC, Mr. Reuben Muoka, affirmed this, saying that the three operators have been issued a 30-day deadline, effective from November 1, 2011, to reverse the trend or face sanctions by the regulator.

This deadline follows a dismal performance by the three operators on quality of service from the result of an independent monitoring exercise carried out by the Commission across the country which showed that all the three operators failed to meet with four key performance indicators that are crucial for quality of service improvements as set by the Commission.

“Consequently, the Commission has notified the three operators of its intention to issue a direction that with effect from November 30, 2011, any of the operators that fail to meet the targets will be barred from further sale of its SIM Cards or addition of any new subscriber to its network,” he said.

Muoka also disclosed that any new SIM card sold or additional subscriber added to the network in contravention of the direction, will attract a penalty of N1,000,000 (One Million Naira) per subscriber added.

The Commission, he said, had in a notice of intention to issue the direction to the operators, made available to the same indicated that after the expiration of the 30-day deadline, it will strictly enforce the impending direction whose contravention will attract a penalty of N5,000,000 (Five Million Naira), and additional N500,000( Five Hundred Thousand Naira) per day that such contravention persists.

In addition to the above, failure of any of the operators to meet the quality of service targets from November 30, 2011 will attract a fine of N500,000 (Five Hundred Thousand Naira) for every month of failure.

Part of the direction read: “It is not in doubt that the customer experience on your network has been far from satisfactory, especially as the Commission has been inundated with complaints from various subscribers on this matter,” it said in the correspondence to the three respective operators in which it expressed concerns that the operators are not doing enough to reverse the trend of unacceptable quality of service which has persisted for too long.

Muoka underscored the fact that the Key Performance indicators measured by the Commission included Call Set Up Success Rate, Call Completion Rate, Stand Alone Dedicated Control Channel and Handover Success Rate.

Despite the fact that Etisalat Nigeria was not listed in the direction by NCC for operators to improve services, there is no doubt that the poor quality of service has engulfed all the operators, especially the mobile service providers.

Unfortunately, the affected networks did not find it worthy to apologised to their teeming Nigerian subscribers, except for MTN, which conversely targeted data customers on the network, attributing the situation to one cable cut or another.

Though MTN promised it has adduced measures to remedy the situation, the instability of services may have not been restored fully.

ITRealms Online recalls that some data customers on MTN recently experienced slow internet speed and difficulty with accessing the internet due to an outage from third party provider.

Corporate Services Executive, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Akinwale Goodluck, attributed the intermittent internet experience to a technical challenge from one of the company’s third party service providers, which he said the disruption was as a result of sub marine cable failure which caused challenges with internet access and slow speed.

“Unfortunately, some of our customers have been affected. We have, however, successfully migrated to another provider, and we expect gradual improvements across board in the internet experience over the next few days,” he explained.

Goodluck further said that as a customer-focused organization, MTN is not unaware of the inconveniences that some of its customers must have suffered during the outage.

“We are truly sorry, and we can only assure Nigerians that MTN remains committed to ensuring the provision of outstanding service quality everywhere you go,” he reassured.

While some non-governmental organizations are already tinkering on the title of award to bestow on 

MTN for its customer friendly attitudes, the question in the minds of many telecom consumers in the country is ‘Where’re other network operators, including the supposed one’s own by Nigerians and should be for Nigerians?’

While waiting to get a response from the mobile network operators, the Association of Licensed 

Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), recently pointed out that with a little challenge being faced by a network has a triple effect as consumers calling the same network would of course be affected as they may not reach their destination.

Speaking recently at the NCC-led celebration of telecom revolution at 10 during a Telecom Parliament in Lagos, ALTON chairman, Mr. Gbenga Adebayo urged consumers to exercise patience with the operators as they are also facing some challenges, just like explained by MTN above.

May be as a joke thrown recently by a concerned Nigerian telecom consumer on one of the social networks that it’s high time those who have the four mobile networks keep them in the cooler for Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks or better still, exchange same for a CDMA line.

This, however, brings the issue of number portability to the front burner. Though NCC had last month, October proclaimed the licensing of some three companies; Interconnect, Saab Grintek, Telecordia, as the consortium for the implementation of its proposed Number Portability (NP), describing these firms as preferred vendor for the service after the technical, financial and demo presentations by the bidding vendors were evaluated.

NCC also said that Number Portability would allow phone users to move from one network to another without losing their numbers.

As said by Muoka, the consortium would be responsible for the setting up and implementation of Number Portability Clearing House in the country, and provide mobile number portability solution administration in the country within six months of receiving the license with a testing period of two months.

He explained that members of the consortium are to execute a tripartite agreement that would indicate their specific responsibilities in the process with the regulator approving such agreement to tally with the conditions of the provision of the service in the country.

He also said, NCC had mandated the consortium to ensure that local content participation and adequate skills transfer are entrenched in the process during the implementation of the five-year license.

Just as the consortium would be expected to configure the technical solution for number portability in line with the consultation documents as earlier published by the Commission, and the solution is to be customized to meet the specific process needed, as well as other requirements of the Nigerian network operators.

Muoka recalled that NCC had earlier indicated that the Number Portability programme would be the next logical step following the SIM Card registration exercise as it is necessary to know the identity of subscribers who are porting their numbers at different times from one network to another.

“Number portability will allow subscribers to move to alternate networks when they are no longer enjoying the quality of services being obtained from their current operators, or when they are no longer happy with the tariffs offered by their current subscribers as they will still retain their original numbers irrespective of the new network from which they may be obtaining their services,” he said.

Industry watchers are saying that the solution may not be Number Portability with the rate of poor quality of service being experienced in the country today, mainly because, all of them have similar challenges, which require the regulator’s attention to help nip this in the bud, such as the network lock-out by some state government agencies, harassment by another agencies with multiple taxation and kidnapping of network staff among others.

Until then, Nigerian telecom consumers seem hapless at this time, when the networks should be thinking of improved quality service delivery and moving investment from voice to data.

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Large economic market, only starting point – Johnson

The Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, has declared that being a large and attractive market is only a starting point, hence Nigeria needs to put her acts in order to be globally competitive.

Speaking at the 17th Nigeria’s Economic Summit (NES) in Abuja, recently, on “Attracting Foreign Direct Investment and Building Global Partnerships” Mrs. Johnson said that as for competitiveness, that Nigeria has a lot to put in place to ensure that both Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and local private investors thrive.

She cited an instance with the Global Competitiveness Index Analyzer 2010 –2011, which indicated that South Africa is much better off than Nigeria.

Also, she noted that South Africa is Best performing country across the continent when it comes to the Global Competitiveness Index 2011-2012, ranking 50th out of the 142 countries of the world in the index, while Nigeria was ranked 127.

She pointed out that on the Infrastructure, South Africa also tops the ladder, market size and technology readiness; ranking 62, 25 and 76 in that order, while Nigeria came 135 and 34  and 106 when placed in parallel.

On the quality of electricity supply and labour market, Mrs. Johnson disclosed that Egypt and Kenya leads on the continent by scoring 74 and 37 respectively, whereas Nigeria was ranked 139 and 70 in the same categories.

She described the aforementioned as the resultant effect of Nigeria’s competitive weaknesses.

According to her, significant improvements are required in strengthening public institutions some of which she listed to include enforcement of property rights and intellectual property.

She further said that government needs to be more efficient in its spending, in addition to acc accountability, which must meet auditing and reporting standards as well as arresting the declining security situation.

Additionally, she said, significant improvements are required in availability and quality of physical infrastructure, namely transportation, power, ports, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to name a few.

Johnson maintained that Major improvements are needed with respect to health-care, stressing that the impact of health issues on businesses is significant.

Due to the fact that Foreign Direct Investment is finite, and countries have to compete for it, there is need for Nigeria to address its competitive weaknesses, some of which she further outlined to include noteworthy improvements in the quality of education and the quality of entrants into the workforce.

Just as it’s key to have the technological readiness, she lamented that the currently low adoption of ICT by individuals and businesses, saying these have negative impacts on productivity.

Development opportunities, she said, still exist in the financial market, but low access to capital and high cost of capital when it could be accessed as well as size of the capital markets based on the number of companies and market capital serve as determining factor too.

“Whilst there is capacity to innovate, significant improvements are required in harnessing such capacities, especially the university –industry collaborations and government’s adoption of advanced technological products,” she said.

Remmy Nweke

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Cisco unveils Jabber WebEx for Africa

Cisco System, today unveils globally its latest in stock version of telepresence known as Jabber WebEx platform.

Disclosing this, the director, Global Collaboration Solutions at Cisco Systems, Mr. Michael Smith noted that this week the firm would hold it’s collaboration summit in Florida, where Jabber WebEx which is an online presence would be unveiled today.

He also said that WebEx could be accessed anywhere and at anytime on any smart device.

According to him, the beta version would be available by December this year, while the general availability starts first quarter of next year.

“Full global availability in third quarter of 2012,” he said.

WebEx, Mr. Smith said could be accessed using iPad, Blackberry, iPhone to name a few smartphones.

This service, he said involves Cisco integration of single identity and administration.

He also listed some of e benefits include improving of productivity and saving time as well as enhanced efficiency.

“As far as we are concerned, the security of this service is well secured,” he said.

Additionally, Mr. Smith said migration from hitherto telepresence of Cisco could be achieved in two ways, namely by automatic upgrade or by way of grade by grade (continue the story)

He further said that Cisco has advanced the workspace by changing the meeting experience with the newest release of Cisco WebEx, which redefines the meeting lifecycle.

“Cisco is giving customers a way to not only share data easily during a meeting but also before and after, through a persistent meeting space that enables cross company collaboration anytime,” he said.

Additionally, he said, Cisco WebEx provides new levels of integration between Cisco WebEx and Cisco’s overall collaboration portfolio, including Cisco Telepresence and several Cisco Unified Communications products, which avails the extending of the power of online meetings while helping customers maximize existing investments.

As said by him, WebEx elevates the video and mobile experience through the provision of high definition (HD) video and pervasive meeting experience with two-way video even when on the go.

“WebEx mobile meetings are available on more mobile devices than any other enterprise meeting platform in the market today,” he reiterated.

Elucidating that with Cisco WebEx basic edition, Cisco will be offering a free version of WebEx in the first quarter (Q1) of 2012 for three users or less to allow new users to experience a web conferencing solution that enables collaboration and helps make their meetings be more productive and efficient.

Remmy Nweke
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Inside Secure, IDT offer USB security solution

Developer and supplier of semiconductors’ embedded software, Inside Secure is partnering Integrated Device Technology (IDT) to offer easy-to-design Universal Serial Bus (USB) security solution.

A joint press statement from the two firms showed that the collaboration would avail versatile, secure microcontroller and low-power, stable 48-MHz CMOS oscillator in a single package.

The two companies said they have collaborated to bring to market a compact, single-package secure microcontroller and oscillator solution that significantly reduces the bill of materials when designing USB tokens for authentication and digital signatures.

They also said the product is available now in different package standards (SOIC8 or QFN20), the INSIDE/IDT offering combines the security, cryptography and connectivity features of the high-performance, low-power INSIDE Secure AT90SO72 secure microcontroller with the stability of the ultra-low power IDT 3MN11G CrystalFree (TM) CMOS oscillator to create the perfect solution for applications where low cost and reduced size are most critical.

“Based on customer feedback, INSIDE has optimized the size and cost of the AT90SO72 to make it particularly well-suited as a secure microcontroller to drive USB authentication and signature tokens,” said Christian Fleutelot, general manager of the Vault-IC SAS business unit and executive vice president for digital security, at INSIDE Secure.

He added that guided by the same strategy, INSIDE has now partnered with IDT to provide a very compact solution that makes the design of USB secure smart objects much easier and cost effective. 

He listed some of the technological features to include that based on a high-performance, low-power, 8/16-bit enhanced RISC Computer Processing Unit (CPU) and is common criteria EAL5+ ready, it features a hardware random number generator, hardware AES (128-, 192- and 256-bit key supported), DES and triple DES.

The offer also includes the exclusive INSIDE Ad-X(TM)2 advanced hardware crypto accelerator, which supports RSA up to 4096 bits, DSA, Diffie-Hellman and all FIPS-recommended elliptic curves up to 1024 bits. 

Key generation is also supported for both RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). 

The AT90SO72 offers a USB 2.0 interface with six software-configurable data transfer endpoints with in-or-out (I/O) directions for bulk, interrupt or isochronous transfers. The flexible I/O options also include a master/slave Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) controller, I2C (two-wire) controller, up to seven GPIO lines and an ISO 7816 interface. 

The AT90SO72 features 288K bytes of ROM and 72K bytes of high-density EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory), which can be mapped as part of the program memory to provide a highly flexible and cost-effective solution for many applications.

“As the recognized leader in silicon timing, IDT is constantly expanding its product and technology portfolio. The CrystalFree CMOS oscillators are an ideal example of a compelling customer timing solution,” said Scott Hills, marketing director of the silicon frequency control product line at IDT. 

“We are pleased that INSIDE Secure selected IDT’s CMOS oscillator for USB token solutions where low power and small package size are crucial.”

Remmy Nweke
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Smartphones: Nigeria ranks 4th in Africa

Nigeria has been ranked fourth in smartphone connection on the continent by the latest report by Informa, industry-based analysts group.

The report which queries the mobile connectivity of African countries was tagged “Mobilizing public services in Africa” readiness index.

With the report made available to ITRealms Online by the Public Relations manager, Informa Telecoms & Media, Denise Duffy, Nigeria is behind South Africa, Egypt and Kenya on smartphone penetration in the highest order.

This trend, Informa noted will continue in the next five years, that is, 2016.

The report also noted that though the mobile device market is maturing and smartphone penetration will accelerate the limited functionality of entry level handsets is an inhibitor to the potential of mobile government services.

Informa further said that however, the smartphone market is set to grow in Africa too.

According to projections by Informa, over a third of mobile connections in South Africa will be via smartphones by the end of 2016, and this figure will be in excess of 15 per cent in Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria.

“This provides far greater flexibility to what can be achieved by mobile government,” part of the report read.

Meanwhile, the white paper on “Mobilizing public services in Africa” which was released officially at the recently concluded AfricaCom 2011 in Cape Town, South Africa, ranked South Africa ahead of 

Kenya and Egypt as the African country most ready nation to embrace mobile government services.

Despite South Africa’s appearance at the top of the index,

According to the report co-authored by Nick Jotischky and Sheridan Nye, noted that until now mobile government implementations have been far slower to take off there than in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania.

These East African countries have been quicker to realize the benefits to citizens and small businesses; agricultural advice, payment of utility bills, commodity pricing information) of delivering public services using cellular technologies.

They pointed out that e-government is being seen increasingly by African governments as a source of economic, social and political development that encourages greater citizen engagement and improves access to services.

Also, they underscored the fact that two-thirds of respondents to a C-level industry survey that Informa recently commissioned believed e-government services are still under-developed in Africa.

As said by Jotischky it is striking when looking at e-government strategies in Africa that there is no clear articulation of the role mobile devices can play in the spread of e-government services.

Given the importance of mobile in Africa’s economy and culture over the last decade, Jotischky said, this appeared strange.

“After all, not only does the continuing growth in wireless access ensure a wide audience reach, but messaging and data usage trends suggest many consumers in Africa are already using mobile for a variety of purposes,” Nick said.

The mobile device market, the author said, has continued to mature and smartphone penetration is accelerating.

Informa projects that by 2016 over a third of mobile connections in South Africa will be via smartphones.

The report equally noted that many of the mobile government services already implemented are in east and North Africa.

Most of these services, the authors foresee as being directed at citizens and businesses but as yet, governments have not used mobile technology as a way of overhauling internal processes and providing more flexibility to their workforces.

Commenting also, Nye was quoted as saying that technology providers Africa the opportunity to enable mobile government by encouraging the migration of public sector services to the cloud.

“Virtualisation of infrastructure and flexible, usage-based pricing would allow government agencies to pay for what they need and flex costs accordingly to match demand. Mobility services should form an integrated part of the public sector’s cloud migration,” he said.

ITRealms Online gathered that Informa’s mobile government readiness index is based on the following indicators mobile penetration; Third Generation (3G) penetration; mobile broadband penetration forecasts; proportion of population living in rural areas; the size of public sector as a per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as well as the United Nations (UN’s) e-Government Readiness Index; fixed broadband penetration and literacy rates.

The index excluded countries with a population less than 5 million.

Remmy Nweke

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DragonWave to acquire Nokia Siemens microwave

Canada-based DragonWave Incorporated has confirmed plans to acquire Nokia Siemens Networks’ microwave transport business, comprising its associated operational support systems (OSS) and related support functions, just as the deal would be closed in first quarter of next year, 2012.

Head of Network Systems, Nokia Siemens Networks, Mr. Marc Rouanne, confirmed this development, saying that under the terms of “Master Acquisition Agreement” signed on Monday between the two entities, as well as acquiring the business, DragonWave would become the preferred, strategic supplier to Nokia Siemens Networks of packet microwave and related products, and the companies would jointly coordinate technology development activities.

He also said that the planned transaction is subject to any applicable regulatory, exchange and third party approvals, a consultation process with trade union representatives, and other customary terms and conditions.

He noted that Nokia Siemens Networks and DragonWave believe the proposed acquisition and supply agreements would accelerate innovation in backhaul products, supporting world class microwave solutions for mobile operators.

He disclosed that the companies aim to complete the planned acquisition and supply agreements in the first quarter 2012, when the deal would be formally closed.

According to him, following the proposed acquisition, Nokia Siemens Networks would retain responsibility for its existing solution sales and associated services for microwave transport, while DragonWave would be responsible for the product line, including Research & Development, product management and operations functions.

“Through this strategic relationship, customers would continue to receive high-quality services and sales support from Nokia Siemens Networks, while DragonWave’s best of breed products would ensure they have access to industry leading technology,” said Marc Rouanne, head of Network Systems, Nokia Siemens Networks. “Our intention is to capitalize on DragonWave’s proven capabilities for innovative product development and focus on our end-to-end solutions.”

For Mr. Peter Allen, president and chief executive officer, DragonWave, they are very proud to partner with Nokia Siemens Networks.

“We hope to welcome new employees as a valuable addition to the DragonWave team,” he said, pointing out that this relationship is transformational, and gives his firm the ability to serve customers who want to access an integrated solution.

Additionally, he said, the partnership provides DragonWave an expanded technology base to address those customers who wish to purchase stand-alone best-in-breed products.

“Our increased scale, diversity and customer footprint, coupled with significantly enhanced resources and capabilities, will provide a solid foundation for faster innovation and broader market penetration,” he said.

The consideration paid by DragonWave on closing, he said, would include approximately 10 million Euros in cash subject to customary purchase price adjustments and 5 million Euros worth of DragonWave common shares which will be subject to a lock-up agreement restricting sale or disposition of the shares for 24 months.

DragonWave, he further said, would assume employee liabilities of approximately 10 million Euros and will enter into a capital asset lease arrangement for approximately 5 million euros.

He explained that the terms of the Master Acquisition Agreement also provide for sales performance based earn-out payments to be made following closing of the deal after the first quarter of 2012.

ITRealms Online gathered that the hardware and basic software earn-out period runs for 18 months following closing and the earn-out period on application software upgrades runs for four years following closing.

“The earn-out payments could raise the value of the transaction by approximately 80 million euros,” he said.

Remmy Nweke
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