After 15 months, NSN-Moto deal finalized

Nokia Siemens Networks (NYSE:NOK, NYSE:SI) closed its acquisition of Motorola Solutions’ (NYSE:MSS) commercial networks group after more than a year of regulatory wrangling and fending off challenges from competitor Huawei (CP: Huawei, Moto settle paving the way for NSN buyout). As of today, NSN takes over the groups 6900 employees and 50 wireless infrastructure contracts globally, and finds itself the proud proprietor of a few new product lines.

- NSN is now a CDMA infrastructure vendor, almost shocking when one considers how corporate parent Nokia has largely ignored the CDMA handset market and has fought numerous battles with Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) over intellectual property.

- NSN is now back in the WiMAX business. NSN originally developed its own WiMAX product line, but after the WiMAX market turned south and its key contract with Clearwire fizzled out, NSN largely abandoned the market in 2009 (CP: NSN parts ways with WiMAX), leaving it to smaller vendors like Motorola and Samsung. By acquiring Motorola, though, NSN inherits its Clearwire customer relationship and several other big WiMAX deals globally.

- NSN has a spare LTE portfolio. Moto hadn’t won any LTE contracts, and NSN’s Flexi architecture has won several so expect Moto’s product line to be canceled.

As Motorola had stopped selling UMTS infrastructure, its GSM business is primarily what NSN was after, making up the bulk of Moto’s customer contracts. The deal wasn’t big enough to vault NSN over Ericsson (NYSE:ERIC) as the world’s largest wireless infrastructure vendor, but it cements its role as the world’s second largest wireless vendor and makes it the third largest such vendor in North America, traditional NSN’s weakest region. NSN also becomes the largest foreign wireless vendor in Japan.

NSN hasn’t yet released any integration timetable. Until today the two companies were still functioning as competitors. First things first, though. After 15 months of trying to close this deal, NSN is throwing a party.

“We’re going to have a series of celebrations,” said NSN spokeswoman Carol Dematteo. “I know everyone at NSN is excited about welcoming our new colleagues, and everyone at Motorola is excited to meet their new colleagues at NSN.”