Embarq’s New Era Begins as Nokia Siemens Takes Command

Everything and nothing changes for Embarq on Sept. 1. Approximately 265 employees will show up for work in their respective network operations centers (NOCs) as usual in Florida, Kansas, North Carolina and Tennessee and begin watching alarms. But they’ll be sporting new badges that identify them as employees of a multinational corporation and they’ll represent the biggest change in the North American telecom mindset in decades.

Embarq employees one day, Nokia Siemens Networks’ the next, they’ll sit in the same seats, scour the same events and logs of familiar systems, reset that same nagging door alarm, drill down with a well-practiced series of mouse clicks on that cluster of remote terminals that goes goofy the same time every day and vow that this is the day it gets fixed. They’ll continue to provide for the diagnostic and prescriptive health of Embarq’s voice network.

Incrementally over the next few months they’ll notice changes: a new script here, some whiz-bang fault correlation tools there, a memo that says, “We don’t do that anymore. Here’s the new procedure.” They’ll begin to see new alerts, unfamiliar acronyms, strange topologies and find themselves responsible for not just one network but many. Their routine will be unsettled — and they’ll like it.

At least that’s the hope of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) as it begins to fulfill its seven-year contract with Embarq to manage its NOCs. It also hopes ultimately to turn the cost-centered operation into a profit maker by applying its managed services model to many more willing service providers.

Jim Hansen, senior vice president of network services at Embarq, the man responsible for driving the initiative and seeing it through, said in the weeks leading up to this handover, “So far so good.”

Hansen is a network guy through and through. He oversees all planning, design, engineering, provisioning, operations, technology evaluation and installation for Embarq and has done likewise for Sprint and similarly for Northwestern Bell and AT&T Inc. He is responsible for approximately 9,000 employees — actually, approximately 8,735 after the transfer.

Yet Hansen shows none of the reservations one might expect from a network guy handing over what Phil Frank, head of managed services for NSN in North America, called the crown jewels of network operators to a vendor — and a foreign one to boot.

Nor should he. Despite this being the largest, fully managed services deal by a service provider in North America to date, NSN has approximately 160 managed services contracts around the world. Granted, most are with wireless companies and of the four in North America, none has gone to this level of full outsourcing, according to John Marcus, senior analyst for telecom infrastructure services with Current Analysis Inc., but its competence in managed services is clear.

Marcus said this arrangement represents a major North American breakthrough for NSN and that no previous contracts are as services-centric as the one with Embarq. “Few have involved full outsourcing of existing operations and the acquisition of network resources,” Marcus said in a report.