Ericsson announced today it has signed a new agreement with T-Mobile Netherlands according to which, the Swedish giant company will mange the Dutch carrier's network, consolidating its leading position on the Netherlands's telecoms market.

The partnership is actually a continuation of already existing agreements and it will be carried out for the next four years, coming after T-Mobile acquired the Dutch division of Orange (one of T-Mo's main competitors on the European mobile market). Since the old Orange network is still existent, Ericsson will disassemble it in order to streamline the new T-Mobile one.

In addition to the above mentioned responsibilities, Ericsson will also have to extend the Dutch 3G / WCDMA network of T-Mobile by acquiring and building over 900 "new sites" (these actions will be finalized in 2010). More than 2000 so-called "MINI-LINK microwave transmission units" will be delivered, with the purpose of enhancing the overall capacity and achieving a more productive packet data handling in the transmission network.

Talking about the newly signed agreement, Jan Kuijpers, Director of Technology for T-Mobile Netherlands, declared: "We are pleased to continue and expand our partnership with Ericsson. This plays an important role in the further rollout and optimization of our network."

"This strategic partnership is an important milestone in Ericsson's relationship with T-Mobile. It underlines our strong market position and means Ericsson is now a supplier to all Dutch operators," added Nils de Baar, President of Ericsson Netherlands.

Since all Dutch people own at least one cell phone, the Netherlands are an over-saturated mobile market. Subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile is currently the second largest mobile operator in the country, having almost five million customers. The magenta carrier is behind KPN (which has about 8.8 million users) and ahead of Vodafone, which only managed to attract four million mobile users.