Lucent Technologies Inc. is swimming in new contracts, announcing seven deals valued at more than $300 million at the CeBIT 2006 trade show.
“Our customers’ competitive landscape continues to undergo tremendous change as the boundaries between the telecom, media and Internet worlds continue to converge,” said Frank D’Amelio, chief operating officer at Lucent. “To address this new landscape, several of our customers are starting to turn to network architectures based on IMS, an area where we are well positioned for future growth.”
Indeed, AT&T Inc.’s pending acquisition of BellSouth Corp. has analysts predicting Lucent may be a winner in the vendor wars over Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem offerings.
“Lucent recently won several IP Multimedia Subsystem contracts at AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular [Wireless L.L.C.], and IMS was highlighted several times as a service differentiator on AT&T’s conference call,” stated a recent Merrill Lynch report.
Lucent is also expected to benefit from Cingular’s “more aggressive” UMTS spending, according to the report.
Lucent made a variety of announcements at the CeBIT show spanning the gamut of its portfolio of products and services in optical, broadband access and mobile network offerings, including:
- Upgrade of T-Systems’ global IP/MPLS network, featuring deployment and maintenance services and routers from Juniper Networks.
- Deployment for Kazakhstan Telecom of an IP-based next-generation network in the capital city of Astana to support advanced voice and data. The network will be managed from a Network Operations Center supplied by Lucent Worldwide Services.
- Expansion of frame agreements with Telecomunikacja Polska to supply Stinger DSL and AnyMedia Access Systems from Lucent’s Accelerate Next-Generation Communications Solutions portfolio, enabling broadband Internet access as well as providing a base for the future introduction of new IP services such as Voice over IP and IPTV.
- Extension of major agreements between Lucent and T-Com for the operator’s optical transport network.
- Award of a prime contract by the U.S. Army for the European Dense Wave Division Multiplexing-Optical Transport Network project, covering network integration services and optical equipment and software to create a multi-country European high-speed optical network.
- Agreement with Sky Link, a telecommunications holding company established to develop a nationwide CDMA450 network in Russia. Lucent will expand and upgrade Sky Link’s CDMA2000 1x and EV-DO network in 10 new regions in Russia.
- Integration of a billing solution for Russia’s MegaFon by Lucent Worldwide Services.
- Agreement with Taiwan Mobile, which deployed Lucent’s Metropolis Wavelength Services Manager optical networking platform to ensure the reliability of its billing and customer management systems.
- And an agreement with Cavalier Telephone, a provider of integrated local, long-distance, Internet and data communication services in the Mid-Atlantic region, which is deploying Lucent’s converged Ethernet solution to enable its new IPTV service offering.
The contract announcements didn’t faze Lucent’s stock, which traded down 2 cents at $2.84 per share following the news.
