Alcatel has taken a lot of business away from Lucent, I don't know why they'd want to merge.

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Source: Telephonyonline.com

That's how Microsoft got where they are today, buying up the companies which made them one Complete Giant.
it's the ol adage...if you can't beat em join em.

Lucent-- MA BELL will soon be french. What a shame.

Remember Alcatel was orginally ITT

I thought that Alcatel simply bought the ITT name in the late 1980's. After that, the former company became Cortelco.

Yes and No ---- Alcatel was a made up company from the ITT components in the European market. Similar to how Sprint came out of United Tel. ITT had a very advanced (for it's time) switch that the French used for ISDN (12), finally the group bought the C O switch side from ITT, folded in the other telecom aspects including branches of wireless companies. So some of it was the old and some of it was new from adding other companies.

When ITT broke up, the CO/large PBX went to Alcatel. Later the cable, etc. OSP, and some transmission manufacturing went to Alcatel. The Key Systems and sets manufacturing and repair were to be sold off. The manufacturing was done in Corinth, MS. The employees bought the factory and became Corinth Telephone Company (CORTELCO). One of the last of the real American made telephones. The repair depot was also bought by employees, headed by George King, now known as King Technologies.

So part was old, part was new, and the rest is history.

KLD

What do I know?

(click) Trivia recorder activated. Now if I can just remember where the play button is on Thursday night...

Alcatel had a very strong Digital Cross-connect System product. What they didn't have was a good tandem switch, so they bought out Texas based DSC Corp in order to quickly field a good tandem switch, the DSC DEX (a very good switch)

Alcatel dropped DSC's DCS systems (not exactly the best on the market) and ran with the DEX for a few years before obsoleting it in favor of next generation VOIP switches.