Nokia Siemens Networks has been recently placed on the first position in a mobile infrastructure vendors top, a recently published survey from Infonetics Research showed. According to the report, the telecommunications vendor has been ranked first by a series of service providers that were asked to name the companies they considered being the top three mobile infrastructure vendors.

Moreover, the survey also showed that the service providers were asked to rate 5 mobile infrastructure vendors based on eight different criteria. The companies rated were Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks, while the criteria included: financial stability, management, pricing, price-to-performance ratio, product roadmap, security, service and support, and technology. When it comes to service and support, the vendor that topped the rankings was Ericsson, the survey showed.

“Based on our recent mobile infrastructure service provider survey, market share reporting, and other carrier surveys, one message is clear: Huawei has really improved its global image. Our discussions with mobile operators indicate Huawei is no longer perceived as a seller of cheap products, but rather as having good technology and offering good value for the price. Huawei is overtaking Alcatel-Lucent on many fronts, and is now en route to attacking Nokia Siemens Networks' market position in the mobile infrastructure space. And watch out, because ZTE is on the rise as well,” stated Stephane Teral, Infonetics Research's principal analyst for mobile and FMC.

Some other findings of the survey also include the fact that an increasing majority of mobile carriers are interested in finding ways of reducing their expenses through outsourcing or sharing their RAN, which drives them into considering this strategy as a key factor when it comes to selecting an infrastructure vendor.

At the same time, the survey also requested for mobile operators to talk about how familiar they were with ratings of mobile infrastructure vendors, about the criteria that were most important when selecting a vendor, as well as about the features that weighed heavier when it came to purchasing RAN, mobile switching, mobile packet core, and Home Location Register (HLR) equipment. The survey is part of Infonetics' Mobile and LTE Continuous Research Service (CRS), the research firm notes.