London:

OSS/BSS World Summit 2013 is a world-class, exclusive summit, for operations support systems and business support systems in telecoms. Based in London, it lays the roadmap for the year ahead in OSS BSS for mobile operators and telecom service providers globally. 

Mobile telecoms equipment joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks said on Wednesday it plans to sell its business support systems business to Redknee as part of a drive to sell non-core assets.

The companies said Redknee (Toronto, Canada) will pay 15 million euros ($19.63 million), plus a maximum of 25 million euros for "performance-based cash earn-outs."

Nokia Siemens (Helsinki, Finland) on Monday had announced an agreement to sell its optical fiber unit.

The news coming out of the CTIA Wireless show this week stretches across every part of the wireless industry.  From backhaul to mobile payments, there is always something happening in the booths and conference rooms at CTIA.  Provided below is a glimpse into some of the news and information coming out of the show in the form of numbers.

Copper vs. Fiber

On Tuesday, Vodafone Hungary announced it will move to an IP/Ethernet-based infrastructure and expand its geographic coverage in Hungary. The service provider chose Tellabs to modernize its current mobile backhaul network.

This might not be the year the world ends, as some say the Mayans prophesized, but it may seem like it for a telecommunications industry under pressure to meet booming demand for Internet resources.

By some projections, the explosion in adoption of Internet connected devices such as laptops, tablets, smart phones, blue ray players and Internet TVs could strain network bandwidth beyond capacity as soon as this year, causing cases of services loss as available access to network bandwidth becomes completely consumed by peak demand.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Amdocs, a provider of customer experience systems, announced the launch of Amdocs Mobile Payments.  The new service is a cloud-based gateway, enabling mobile operators to scale their mobile payments business for both prepaid and postpaid customers to open new revenue streams.  Mobile payments that are charged via the carrier offer consumers the option of charging purchases directly to their mobile phone bill, prepaid balance or mobile wallet.

Amdocs, a provider of OSS software and services, last week announced the launch of two new services - the Amdocs Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Connected Home services - that enable service providers to quickly enter the connected devices market.

Wireless operators have grown networks to a point past the level of complexity that can be managed and optimized manually.  Today, wireless networks have up to 6-layers at the macro level with additional micro levels inserted in key areas where network capacity is an issue.  In order to manage the complexity of interoperability handoffs and signaling necessary to provide the highest call quality, operators need automation.

On Friday, DragonWave, Inc. (Ottawa, Canada) announced plans to acquire Nokia Siemens Networks' (Espoo, Finland) microwave transport business, including its associated operational support systems (OSS) and related support functions. Under the deal, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) will retain responsibility for its existing sales and associated services for microwave transport, while DragonWave will be responsible for the product line, including R&D, product management and operations functions.