Ericsson lands big deal with Vodafone for network management

Swedish equipment vendor Ericsson has announced that it has entered into a five-year partnership with Vodafone Italy to manage field operations for the cellco. Under the terms of the agreement, Ericsson will assume responsibility for Vodafone’s fixed and mobile access and transmission networks, as well as taking control of the operator’s fixed core network nodes. As part of the deal, around 300 Vodafone Italy employees joined Ericsson on 1 July. Magnus Mandersson, head of Ericsson’s Global Services unit, commented: ‘With the scale of Ericsson’s business in Italy, the expertise, know-how and resources of our people on the ground, we have a fantastic opportunity to add real value to Vodafone Italy via this field operations undertaking. We are committed to ensuring the full weight of our capabilities is available to this new partnership with Vodafone in Italy and we welcome the new team to the Ericsson family’. TeleGeography notes that Ericsson already conducts managed services operations for Vodafone in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.