Nokia Siemens Networks reaffirmed its commitment to conquering the North American market with an announcement that Sue Spradley, the head of its North American operations, will be joining the company’s executive board.

In a statement, Nokia Siemens CEO Simon Beresford-Wylie said the company’s commitment to expanding its presence in North America “is as strong as ever.” The company also announced that it would establish a “center of competence” in Dallas devoted to the research and development of LTE technology.

Nokia Siemens Networks recently suffered a major setback in its North American efforts when it lost out on a bid to acquire Nortel’s CDMA and LTE assets. Though Nokia Siemens made the initial stalking horse bid of $650 million for the assets as part of Nortel’s bankruptcy proceedings, Ericsson ended up winning the final auction for the technology at a price of $1.13 billion.

The deal included important CDMA contracts with several North American operators, including Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Bell Canada. Valuable patents and intellectual property around LTE were also part of the acquisition. It has not been disclosed how much Nokia Siemens was willing to pay for the patents. Research In Motion said it had entered into a handshake agreement to buy parts of the assets for $1.1 billion.