Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) CEO Ben Verwaayen isn’t done tinkering with his company yet. After selling off its stake in defence contractor Thales and entering into a major alliance with HP (NYSE:HPQ) to sell integrated communications and IT solutions, Verwaayan said there are plenty more plans in the works for more co-sourcing deals, the possibility of outsourcing some of its own product development and even the sale of some of its product divisions. (more…)
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Archive for the ‘IMS’ Category
ALU CEO hints at business unit sales, more co-sourcing deals
by Kevin FitchardJuly 30th, 2009
No Comments Related Topics: 3G/4G, All Stories, Broadband/FTTX, Business Services, Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), IMS, Residential Services |
Alcatel-Lucent on Nortel
by Kevin FitchardFebruary 4th, 2009
During Alcatel-Lucent’s earnings call today, an analyst tried to pin down CEO Ben Verwaayen on whether Alcatel-Lucent planned to take advantage of Nortel’s recent bankruptcy filing to buy up assets or lure away customers. Verwaayen’s answer:
“We have nothing but a great deal of respect for our competitors in the market,” Verwaayen said. “We have said, at the same time, we are not going to be have any big M&A plans going forward. … We’re going to execute our plans. We’re very excited about our plans. We’re very excited about the opportunity for ourselves to build and to grow from what we have. And all of the rest, I think, is quite interesting to consider for industry watchers. But for us, we’ll focus on the here and now.”
Though analyts are speculating Alcatel-Lucent might be one of the potential bidders for Nortel’s pieces, Verwaayen is implying that a big purchase of Nortel’s still developing 4G business or CDMA business would be out of the question, to say nothing of its mammoth metro Ethernet unit. As for poaching Nortel’s customers, Verwaayen says he doesn’t badmouth competitors. Of course, you don’t have to talk badly about competitors on conference calls if you want their business. You just have to talk badly about them to their customers.
Alcatel-Lucent’s Q4 conference call wasn’t terribly enlightening, though the Verwaayen did go into some detail about its new partnering and start-up strategy, which Telephony Senior Editor Ed Gubbins covers in his analysis today. The vendor saw sales decline in all of its divisions except two notable areas: IP/MPLS routing equipment and IMS. Alcatel-Lucent noted that IMS and next-generation network equipment revenues are now higher than TDM switching equipment revenues.
1 Comment Related Topics: All Stories, Broadband/FTTX, Carrier Ethernet, IMS, Optical, Wireless |
Apple considered an MVNO for iPhone
by Kevin FitchardApril 10th, 2008
For those of you who think Apple’s iPhone deal with AT&T looked an awful lot like an MVNO relationship, there’s a reason. Several blogs (MacNN and AppleInsider, to name two) dug through a recently published patent application Apple filed in 2006 and discovered that Apple was considering some kind of hyper-virtual operator business model, in which it would connect to any of multiple different operators on the fly, depending on who could offer the best rates at any given moment.
On one end would be an Apple server that tracked each iPhone user’s location in real time. On the other end would be a gaggle of network operators Apple had resale agreements with. Each would set determined rates for specific regions and for specific times, and the Apple server would sort through that data selecting the cheapest rate at the time for the customers. Apple also made provisions for customers selecting their own operator and accompanying rate plan based on the same data, allowing them to change operators depending on the time of day or region.
That’s all fairly complicated since the typical MVNO signs a network deal with one operator and sticks to it. There is precedence among the large resellers like Tracfone, which sign multiple operator agreements, but I doubt they have the capability to switch between operators on the fly based on real-time pricing info. While those capabilities may be in Apple’s hands right now, the carriers probably aren’t equipped just yet, said Alex Besen, who heads the Washington mobile data consultancy The Besen Group. “Not yet,” Besen said. “As they move toward next-generation networks, they will.”
So will this MVNO model ever appear? It’s doubtful. Apple seems to be doing pretty well with its partnership deals at the moment. And if open access really takes off in the next few years, there may not even be reason to consider it.
No Comments Related Topics: All Stories, IMS, Wireless |