Nokia dives deeper into infrastructure services

Nokia Networks scored a big LTE win in North America when Sprint tapped the company for its Sprint Spark build, and now Nokia is clearly eager for more. Recognizing that American carriers often choose vendors that can offer network implementation services, Nokia recently announced its plan to acquire SAC Wireless.
“We’re seeing a huge demand for network implementation services,” said Ricky Corker, EVP of North America for Nokia Networks. “At times we found that quite a challenge to actually be able to fulfill the requirements.” Corker said that meeting the resource demand was sometimes difficult, and that Nokia found that it needed more expertise in permitting and site acquisition.
Nokia already offers network deployment services to carriers, but in the past the company has sub-contracted much of the work. Recognizing the fact that carriers want providers to “self-perform,” Nokia is investing in a U.S. company that has a track record in this area.
“We felt the best way to get the additional resources, competence and skills that we needed to address that market opportunity was to actually go out and acquire a highly regarded, trusted, proven performer in the service provider space,” said Corker. “There’s a lot of companies in the space but they’re not all … of the same quality. … So the outcome of that search was the decision to engage with SAC Wireless.” The company did not disclose the purchase price.
SAC Wireless counts all four of the top U.S. carriers as customers, and it also counts Nokia’s biggest competitors. Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei are all SAC Wireless customers. Corker said that SAC will continue to deploy equipment made by these vendors.
One of SAC Wireless’s unique assets is its Engine Room. The Engine Room is not a place; it is a process. SAC describes it as “a revolutionary process focused on managing site development activities for national network modification programs.” Noting that carriers need to “mass-produce entitlement and regulatory approvals in a controlled, expeditious and economical manner,” SAC has combined processes and procedures in an effort to cut costs and time to market.
DAS is another strong suit for SAC Wireless. The company says it is one of a handful of “elite” providers to receive the highest level of carrier DAS training. In addition to carrier distributed antenna systems, SAC has designed and built DAS for universities, hotels and transportation venues. Corker said that DAS is just one of the significant opportunities ahead for infrastructure service providers.
“While there’s always sort of peaks and troughs in this network implementation business, if you look forward there’s going to be massive networks expansions required,” he said. “There’s going to be new spectrum coming online, there’s going to be more DAS, more small cells, we see new antenna technologies coming along which will need to be deployed at some point.”
Nokia expects its purchase of SAC Wireless to close this quarter. The Illinois company employs roughly 450 people.
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