Ericsson readies for Alcatel/Lucent fight

Sweden-based vendor giant Ericsson held its Capital Markets Day event this week in New York City, and executives from the company touted Ericsson's mobile broadband experience, integrated global approach and its new assets from the acquisition of Marconi that will strengthen the company as it competes against the pending merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies.

Ericsson President and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said at the conference, "We have a leading position in WCDMA and HSDPA that we can leverage, and with the Marconi portfolio we have expanded our offerings in transport and transmission. Svanberg said Ericsson is nearing the completion of it integration of Marconi's products and workforce, but still may move some of Marconi's operations and cut up to 1250 more jobs from the London-based company before the integration is finished.

Aside from exploiting the Marconi products, Svanberg added that the Ericsson also will leverage its increasing successful practice of becoming a prime integrator of equipment and managed services for carriers, while driving implementation of IP Multimedia Subsystem architectures. Svanberg also noted that Ericsson is spending more than $600 million annually on research and development.

That comment came on the same day that Alcatel and Lucent confirmed that they would run a beefed-up R&D operation out of New Jersey after their pending merger closes. Angel Ruiz, president and CEO of Ericsson North America, said of the competitive threat from Alcatel/Lucent, "They've got a lot of work to do the next 12 to 18 months to integrate before they can really get going. We think the three ex-RBOCs will be looking for a competitor to Alcatel for their networks, and we're in hot pursuit of a good part of this GPON opportunity that they have available."