Industry observers believe that infrastructure vendors favor a tie-up between Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and AT&T Wireless Services Inc. Both companies have deals with the same manufacturers, including L.M. Ericsson, Nokia Corp., Nortel Networks Ltd. and Siemens AG.
Nortel is proud of its role as provider of the core network for AWS because of its Internet Protocol competency. On the radio-access part, AWS’ network is dominated by Ericsson and Nokia.
Regardless of which suitor AWS chooses, all scenarios lead to a Wideband-CDMA upsurge in the United States, said Andrew Seybold of The Seybold Group. A deal between Cingular and AWS would allow Cingular to gather all its TDMA customers and AWS’ TDMA customers onto one network, thus creating room for Cingular to build out its GSM networks, Seybold noted. He added this would lay the foundation for an eventual W-CDMA network, which he said is a good thing for the United States.
“It will give this country competition for third generation. That’s why both (Cingular and AWS) are the best fit,” said Seybold.
The W-CDMA scenario would work if Cingular had the appetite for it, Seybold commented. AWS already is making plans to roll out W-CDMA in about four cities in the nation, and Cingular could build upon AWS’ plan.
The same scenario for UMTS would hold for other possible buyers like Vodafone Group plc and NTT DoCoMo Inc., Seybold said.
DoCoMo and Vodafone are not likely to significantly change contractors, said Peter Jarich, senior analyst with Current Analysis. Vodafone’s major contractors are Ericsson, Siemens and Nokia. DoCoMo uses Fujitsu, NEC Corp. and Alcatel Althsom.
“You don’t expect DoCoMo to say good-bye to Ericsson and bring in Fujitsu,” said Jarich.
Whichever scenario works out, the networks will not be disrupted, at least in the short run, Jarich added.
Neither Seybold nor Jarich see an acquisition by Nextel Communications Inc. working because Nextel and AWS operate different technologies.
