Now that regulators have finally approved Verizon Wireless' blockbuster $3.9 billion acquisition of AWS spectrum from four cable companies, it's natural to wonder what other hookups might be coming down the pike. We already know that AT&T has inked agreements to purchase most of the nation's WCS spectrum, but there are no doubt other major deals looming in the wireless industry's shadows. Sprint Nextel, MetroPCS and Leap Wireless are operators considered likely candidates for M&A action, but myriad combinations are possible. And the possibility of Dish Network and AT&T getting together certainly offers intriguing possibilities. The FierceWireless team has taken a look at the top five most likely matchups among U.S. wireless operators based upon discussions with a number of the industry's leading business and financial analysts. The list, which purely speculative, is ranked in order of likelihood, from the least likely to the most likely. Special Report

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

Nokia Siemens Networks is close to selling its business support systems division, according to a Bloomberg article.

The BSS unit could attract up to $377 million, reported Bloomberg, citing sources with knowledge of the matter. Potential buyers include Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), Amdocs and private-equity firms.

NSN's BSS unit provides telecommunications carriers with services such as converged charging and billing, mediation and service brokering. The company's website says its BSS unit has more than 300 operator customers globally as well as 555 million subscribers on its charging system and in excess of 140 convergent mediation customers globally.

When asked to comment on the rumored sale negotiations, an NSN spokeswoman referred FierceBroadbandWireless to NSN spokesman Ben Hunt's email response in the Bloomberg article.

"As we announced in November, Nokia Siemens Networks believes that the future of our industry is in mobile broadband, and we are intensifying our strategic focus on that area," Hunt said. "Business areas not consistent with the new strategy are planned to be divested or managed for value, and we have already announced the divestment of a number of these business."

NSN announced earlier this week that it is opening a 4G network gear assembly line in Brazil with contract manufacturer Flextronics International. Shipments from the plant should begin in early October, Ken Wirth, head of the Americas region for NSN, told Reuters.

Brazil's recently concluded 4G spectrum auction required licensees to include at least 60 percent Brazilian content in their network hardware. NSN signed 4G contracts with a Brazilian carrier and a Chilean carrier that Wirth declined to identify to Reuters. The rapidly growing Americas region already contributes 13 percent of the NSN's revenue, which is more than more than North America contributes.

NSN, the network-equipment venture of Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and Siemens, reported an operating loss of $278.3 million for 2012's second quarter, wider than the operating loss of $136 million it had in the year-ago period, though the company noted that because it completed the acquisition of Motorola Solutions' (NYSE:MSI) networks business on April 30, 2011, its second-quarter results were not directly comparable to last year.

Overall, the company's quarterly sales dipped 8 percent year-over-year to around $4.1 billion. NSN reported year-over-year drops in sales in every region except Asia-Pacific.

The vendor is undergoing a major restructuring to focus on mobile broadband and plans to have slashed up to 17,000 jobs by the end of 2013 to save $1.3 billion. As part of its restructuring, NSN this year sold its microwave transport business to DragonWave, its fixed line broadband access business to Adtran and its WiMAX business to NewNet Communication Technologies.

Declining demand is impacting all players in the infrastructure industry, even leading Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE, which have often been faulted for offering rock-bottom project bids that lowered infrastructure prices industry-wide. Both of those firms have been trying to diversify beyond traditional infrastructure offers and have seen their bottom lines bolstered by their growing handset units. Yet ZTE reported a 68 percent plunge in first-half net profit, while Huawei reported that its operating profit for the first half of this year fell 22 percent.

Also during the second quarter, Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) saw its net income fall 63 percent. Alcatel-Lucent (NASDAQ: ALU) reported a net loss of $312.5 million for the quarter compared to a profit of around $53 million in the year-ago period.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this Reuters article

Related articles:
ZTE's first-half profit slumps 68% amid weaker gear market
Huawei posts 22% decline in first-half operating profit
NSN sees Q2 sales drop 8%, continues with restructuring plan
Alcatel-Lucent to cut 5,000 jobs as part of new restructuring plan
Network infrastructure vendors face tough Q2, road ahead
Ericsson's Q2 profit drops 63% on weaker network sales
Alcatel-Lucent to post Q2 operating loss, will miss annual profit goal
NSN: Rivals will also have to refocus, cut back

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Verizon Wireless' (NYSE:VZ) certification of Altair Semiconductor's FourGee-3100/6200 chipset is a major step toward expanding the number of machine-to-machine (M2M) devices and other products available for use on Verizon's LTE network.

"Certification is crucial for original equipment manufacturers in minimizing the time it takes from investment to revenue in commercializing devices such as tablets, M2M applications and other LTE products," said Altair.

Device manufacturers using Altair's FourGee-3100/6200 chipset will be able to skip cumbersome testing on the way to bringing their products to Verizon's network, said GigaOM, which noted Altair's certification news marks the first time Verizon has certified a chip vendor as opposed to a device.

M2M equipment could be an immediate beneficiary of Altair's achievement of Verizon certification. Though machine-to-machine communications have traditionally needed to run on only the most basic digital communications networks, module maker Sierra Wireless and others have begun pushing LTE as a must-have for devices delivering emerging high-speed M2M applications. Further, as operators seek to phase out older 2G networks even older M2M devices will likely need to gain LTE capability.

The global M2M market will soar to 359.3 million total M2M cellular connections in 2016, according to a recent report from Berg Insight.  The report also said the world's 10 largest operators by revenues had 68.2 million M2M subscribers at the end of 2011, an increase of around 38 percent year-over-year. Further, the GSM Association said last October that the connected device market represents an "addressable revenue opportunity" for mobile operators of nearly $1.2 trillion by 2020–more than seven times the revenues generated from connected devices in 2011.

Verizon, like other mobile operators, is building up its M2M business, though it indicated during its first-quarter 2012 earnings conference call that it would no longer disclose total network connections, explaining that M2M is more complicated in terms of how plans and device connections are formulated.

Eran Eshed, Altair's co-founder and vice president of marketing, said the chip vendor hopes to help develop the next wave of LTE solutions–including M2M, fixed and mobile broadband applications–for Verizon's LTE network, which now spans 330 U.S. markets.

Altair's FourGee-3100/6200 chipset supports both FDD and TDD variants using the same software and covers any LTE frequency band in the range between 700-2700MHz. The chipset implements a high performance MIMO receiver and is based on Altair's proprietary O²P Software Defined Radio (SDR) processor.

Completion of the certification process with Verizon is a strategic milestone for Altair, which is one of many chipset vendors actively pursuing LTE business. Many of those firms, including Altair and rival Sequans Communications, shifted their focus in recent years to LTE and away from WiMAX.

For more:
- see this Altair release
- see this GigaOM article

Related articles:
M2M customers may feel the pain of AT&T's 2G shutdown
Operators form global M2M alliance to attract multinational enterprises
M2M gains traction as business model matures
Report: M2M connections to soar to 359M in 2016
Verizon CTO: Industry needs standard M2M platform
Sierra Wireless: LTE becoming an M2M prerequisite

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”