Lucent shows new face to U S West

U S West said last week that it will purchase $300 million in equipment from Lucent Technologies in a deal that also provides the regional Bell operating company with Lucent software and its NetCare professional services. Under a two-year agreement, U S West will deploy 41 5ESS digital switches to replace analog central office switches in its network.

U S West expects the network improvements to help accommodate higher voice and data call volumes. The carrier will also upgrade existing switches.

"With the NetCare services, Lucent will help U S West modernize its network by providing design, engineering and installation," said Ave Elliott, Lucent's regional vice president. "NetCare is a bit of a push for [Lucent] and will play a key role for us in the future."

"It doesn't hurt to get one of the big RBOCs on your side," said Ken Kelly, senior analyst with Dataquest. "Lucent is providing a lot of services for them, but Nortel Networks does, too. [U S West] expects suppliers to provide them with services," he said.

With Lucent's recent announcement that NetCare would be building and operating Jato Communications' network, will this translate to RBOC networks? One analyst thinks so.

"This is a huge, complicated service provider that is entrusting its entire business onto a single vendor-that is unheard of-especially with the RBOCs," said Erica Henkel, a Frost & Sullivan analyst. "They usually say they will not entrust anything to a single vendor."