NEC ups chip outsourcing

NEC Electronics will likely outsource more production of semiconductors used in consumer electronics to outside foundries to insure against a sudden plunge in demand following losses last year tied to a rapid drop in orders, reports The Wall Street Journal.

NEC Electronics president Junshi Yamaguchi said any new outsourcing would likely start after the company's proposed merger with Renesas Technology.

While the two chip makers have reached a basic agreement to merge by April, they are still working out the details of a plan that could lead to the creation of Japan's largest chip maker.

Sprint has confirmed it will outsource the running of its US CDMA network to Ericsson, but is keeping WiMax to itself while admitting that all its PDA-class devices will be able to fall back on WiFi when all else fails, says The Register.

The outsourcing agreement involves transferring 6 000 staff to Ericsson, who will take responsibility for the day-to-day running of Sprint's CDMA, iDEN and wired networks for the next seven years - at a cost slightly south of $5 billion - while Sprint tries to migrate the users onto its WiMax network.

Sprint retains ownership of all the base stations, and the operating frequencies, and still gets to select technology and vendors - though selecting Ericsson kit will obviously be encouraged.

Computer giant IBM has entered into a 10-year IT outsourcing pact with Innovation Auto Risk, according to Stock Watch.

Under the arrangement, IBM will deploy server, storage, networking and IT security infrastructure to be hosted at a data centre in Delhi and provide onsite infrastructure monitoring services from an onsite command centre.

In addition, IBM will provide managed services and ongoing project management for infrastructure procurement, commissioning and configuration as well as hardware refreshes after five years.