O2 Germany has awarded Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) a contract to upgrade and expand its 2G and 3G networks. In a three-year deal, the vendor will upgrade O2 Germany’s 2G network with EDGE capabilities and upgrade its 3G network with HSPA. In a press release, NSN said the 3G upgrade will see O2 cover the whole of Germany with HSPA download technology (HSDPA). Such a rollout would put O2 Germany on a par with market-leader T-Mobile Germany, which last week announced that it had completed its rollout of HSPA technology by covering all cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants.

Under a separate services contract, Nokia Siemens Networks Services Deutschland said it would offer repair and maintenance services at more than 200 of O2 Germany’s radio access sites. It is the first customer win for NSN’s service subsidiary in Germany, which was established in January 2008. Meanwhile, NSN rival Ericsson announced today that it has achieved what it claims is the world’s first successful establishment of enhanced HSPA mobile data connections on a commercial network, in association with Italian operator 3 Italia. Ericsson said the technology offers peak data upload speeds of up to 5.8Mb/s and a significant reduction in network latency.