By silicon.com, 12 January 2004 14:55
NEWS 12.01.99 Telecoms equipment giant Lucent Technologies has bought privately held Kenan Systems in a share deal worth approximately $1.48bn.
Kenan specialises in flexible billing, order processing and customer analysis software that enables service providers to produce a single bill for wireless, voice, data, Internet and broadband cable services. The acquisition takes Lucent one step closer to its aim of offering a one-stop shop for voice and data products.
Meanwhile, a report in yesterday's FT claimed Lucent was in negotiations to buy data-networking specialist Ascend Communications for $16bn.
12.01.04 The phrase that jumps out from this story is 'one-stop shop for voice and data products'. The late 1990s boom in all things telecoms and internet led to many things and one of them was an appetite by a few large companies to do it all.
Lucent fell into this category and while rival Cisco is emerging from the downturn still a heavyweight, Lucent, Nortel and others were hurt by one body blow after another.
By the end of 2001, Lucent was selling the customer care and billing assets that came with Kenan to CSG Systems. The purchase of Ascend - a company that mainly made its fortune and own acquisitions on the back of the growth of the internet and ISPs' equipment needs - did happen but it was perhaps Lucent's defining moment of over-extension.
This period of exuberance saw billion-dollar write-downs, tens of thousands losing their jobs - that's just at each of the large telecoms equipment manufacturers - and a reputation left in the mud. The only good news is that now things finally seem to be picking up in telecoms.
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