NSN Denies Selling DPI to Iran

ESPOO, Finland -- Recent media reports have speculated about Nokia Siemens Networks’ role in providing monitoring capability to Iran. Nokia Siemens Networks has provided Lawful Intercept capability solely for the monitoring of local voice calls in Iran. Nokia Siemens Networks has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran.

In most countries around the world, including all EU member states and the U.S., telecommunications networks are legally required to have the capability for Lawful Intercept and this is also the case in Iran. Lawful Intercept is specified in standards defined by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).

To fulfill this Lawful Intercept requirement as part of an expansion to provide further mobile connectivity to Iran in the second half of 2008, Nokia Siemens Networks provided TCI, the Iranian national operator, with the capability to conduct voice monitoring of local calls on its fixed and mobile network.

The restricted functionality monitoring center provided by Nokia Siemens Networks in Iran cannot provide data monitoring, internet monitoring, deep packet inspection, international call monitoring or speech recognition. Therefore, contrary to speculation in the media, the technology supplied by Nokia Siemens Networks cannot be used for the monitoring or censorship of internet traffic.

On March 31st, 2009 Nokia Siemens Networks and Perusa Partners Fund I L.P., a private investment firm advised by Munich based Perusa GmbH, successfully closed the sale of Nokia Siemens Networks’ Intelligence Solutions business to Perusa. Nokia Siemens Networks made the decision to exit this business as it primarily addresses customer segments which differ from telecom service providers and is therefore not part of Nokia Siemens Networks core business.

Nokia Networks