2,000 leave Nokia for networks JV with Siemens

Nokia is gearing up for the birth of its joint venture with Siemens, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), by selecting 2,000 staff to be transferred.

Workers picked to make the move will come from the Finnish vendor's centralised corporate support platforms, such as human resources and PR, and will begin working for NSN once the merger of the Nokia and Siemens units is officially completed, thought to be sometime in January next year.

The staff will be in addition to those already working for Nokia's networks business. NSN will start life with 60,000 workers - one-third from Nokia, two-thirds from Siemens - although staffing levels will be subsequently reduced by around 9,000.

The merger of Nokia's and Siemens' networks businesses followed a number of big moves in the telecoms networks industry. Since late last year, Alcatel and Lucent have announced a merger, Ericsson snaffled the lion's share of Marconi and most recently Nortel sold its UMTS access business for $320m.