Partnerships: ZTE buys from U.S. vendors; Bharti outsources customer care; and more

ZTE Corp. signed framework agreements to purchase semiconductor components from five U.S. technology vendors. The deals are valued at $3 billion. The three-year purchase agreements are with Qualcomm Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., Freescale Semiconductor, Altera Corp. and Broadcom Corp.
Bharti Airtel announced a strategic partnership with IBM, Tech Mahindra and Spanco to outsource its core customer service functions including call centers and back office capabilities.
China Mobile has chosen Spirit DSP‘s TeamSpirit platform to power the latest version of its Fetion cross-network communication IM service that connects Internet and mobile subscribers. The TeamSpirit platform includes voice, video and conferencing capabilities.
Lifetime Television and JAGTAG, which provides mobile 2D barcode solutions, announced a mobile marketing campaign to promote the launch of “The Fairy Jobmother,” which is a new unscripted series. Lifetime will incorporate JAGTAGs in television commercials as well as online, out-of-home and print materials. JAGTAGs allow customers to use their phone to request and receive multimedia content.
Video ringtone provider Vringo Inc. expanded an agreement with Bango, a mobile billing services provider, to allow mobile subscribers in the United Kingdom to get paid access to the Vringo video ringtone platform. The deal will allow Vringo to launch a commercial video ringtone service in the United Kingdom and allow subscribers to pay for the service directly via their mobile phone bill.
IPWireless said it signed a cooperation agreement with Samsung Electronics to develop and demonstrate phones with broadcast capabilities based on the 3GPP IMB standard.
EastNets, which provides compliance and payments solutions and services, signed a partnership agreement with BICS to connect its mobile remittance solution, en.MoRe, to BICS’ HomeSend solution. The partnership creates a new mobile remittance solution, which is scheduled to go live this month, that will allow consumers to use their mobile phone to trigger money transfer transactions, said the companies.
Recursion Software partnered with Tekmark Global Solutions L.L.C. to bring desktop and server-level applications to emerging devices, including phones, sensors, laptops, netbooks, routers and other mobile devices. The partnership will use Recursion’s pervasive software platform Voyager and Tekmark’s application development expertise in finance, pharmaceutical and telecommunications optimization, said the companies.
Nokia Siemens Networks selected Spirent Communications to validate the performance of its Flexi NG evolved packet core gateway. The company will use Spirent’s Landslide product to assess the scale and data performance of its EPC gateway against complex mobility and real-world traffic scenarios, said the company.