Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) CEO Rajeev Suri has outlined the company’s commitment to transforming mobile networks to cope with the explosion in smart devices, including the creation of a Smartphone Experience Lab, based in Telefónica premises in Madrid. Speaking at the 24th annual Spanish telecoms summit in Santander, Suri also took the opportunity to confirm that the company has received unsolicited expressions of interest from private equity firms, due to its recent business momentum.
“Smartphones are taking off everywhere, and Spain happens to be one of the fastest growing markets, outpacing Germany, Sweden, the UK and US,” Suri said. “Networks need to transform – now – to cope with the huge amounts of signalling and data traffic smart devices generate. Our approach is the only one that can cope with this explosion, while preparing operators for the fast-approaching roll-out of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.”
In reference to reports that NSN has received enquiries from private equity firms seeking to invest, Suri said: “I take this unsolicited interest as a testament to the progress we are making.” 
Suri was addressing an audience of telecoms policy-makers and business leaders in Santander, Spain on the challenges that the sudden proliferation of smart devices poses to mobile operators. Many always-on smartphone apps generate eight times as much signalling traffic as laptops with mobile connections. This can overload network elements so that they no longer support additional data or voice calls, degrading network quality. This phenomenon can be seen in many smartphone-heavy networks around the world and, unless addressed, could become increasingly common.“Finding ways to support the 10,000 per cent increase in smartphone generated data traffic by 2015 is vital for operators worldwide,” said Suri.
The Smartphone Experience Lab is a joint initiative with Telefónica and Nokia. Its objective is to find the ideal configuration between mobile handsets, applications and networks, to minimize any negative network impact from smart devices, improve resource consumption handset and application performance, and provide people with the best possible user experience. The outcomes from the Lab’s activities will include guidelines on the optimum network and handset configurations and application development.
