Nokia is buying Comptel, a company that specialises in building software-based data communications solutions for mobile carriers.
Nokia’s offer is to pay €3.04 in cash, valuing Comptel at €347 million ($370 million).
Comptel’s software is today in use by more than 300 operators, covering 1.2 customers in 90 countries, and it processes 20% of the world’s mobile data usage daily, with an emphasis on developing markets.
The key thing here is the software element: Nokia’s legacy has been in “kit” or equipment - the expensive and more difficult-to-upgrade hardware of the telco enterprise world.
Nokia may also still be a big player in carrier equipment (and some newer things like VR cameras) but that business is in decline, so it is trying to show that it’s changing with the times.
The company is innovating quickly enough to catch the trend in quite the way that Apple, Android maker Google, and eventually dozens of OEMs making Android handsets did.
After its initial partnership with and eventual sale of its handset business to Microsoft the future has been changing for this company.
Specifically, Nokia will be combining Comptel with its own carrier solutions business, and will be aiming it at those carriers looking to “automate as much of their network and business operations as possible.” according to a company statement.
That includes customer services, self-optimization, management and orchestration.
“Comptel would help with this objective by bringing catalogue-driven fulfilment and digital service lifecycle management, complex event processing, applications for customer engagement and service monetization; and emerging technologies for context-aware on-device commerce and IoT pattern detection,” Nokia has added.
Comptel and Nokia are based in Finland so in one regard this is part of regional consolidation that may have been long on the anvil.
Comptel, founded in 1986 and traded on Nasdaq.
Comptel: Know More- CEO: Juhani Hintikka (3 Jan 2011–present)
- Headquarters: Helsinki, Finland
- Number of employees: 750
- Founded: 1986, Finland
- Type of business: Public (NASDAQ OMX Helsinki: CTL1V)
