Ericsson announced yesterday plans to acquire the telecoms business of Guangzhou-based Sunrise Technology, a provider of IT services in the operations and business support systems (OSS/BSS) domain.

Sunrise will continue to exist as a separate entity and serve customers in sectors outside of telecoms. But its telecoms business, with about 1,000 stafff, will be integrated with Ericsson’s global services business, which employs 65,000 staff in 180 countries.

The acquisition is scheduled to be completed by Q2, subject to customary closing conditions.

Magnus Mandersson, EVP and head of global services at Ericsson, said the acquisition will boost its ability to serve mobile operators’ IT transformation needs in China, the world’s biggest mobile market with 1.28 billion connections.

“Most of the country’s operators are at the beginning of their IT transformation journeys and will soon replace their legacy IT systems with next-generation solutions, which will enable them to launch digital offerings,” Mandersson said.

The addition of the Sunrise unit strengthens its position in the OSS/BSS space, where Ericsson has already made a number of acquisitions — Telcordia (2012), TeleOSS and Telcocell (2013), GEOSS (2014) and TimelessMIND (2015).