Thread ---Lucent details plans for Ascend
By Ben Heskett
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
June 28, 1999, 5:05 a.m. PT
Telcom equipment maker Lucent Technologies today will detail its plans to
integrate the $24 billion worth of technology it purchased from Ascend
Communications, promoting itself as a provider of networking gear for the
Internet.
Lucent's strength has been in providing the back-end equipment that makes voice
networks run smoothly. But with the growth of Net traffic, the company is looking to be the
leader for technology that can work with the new networks run by Internet service providers
and communications companies.
To further that goal, the firm announced plans to purchase Ascend in January, a deal
finalized last week following a shareholder vote. Today, a scheduled event in San
Francisco will showcase Lucent's plans for Ascend, as well as Nexabit Networks, the
high-end equipment start-up it purchased last Friday for $900 million.
The marriage of phone and data networks is one of the biggest trends in the networking
industry. The growth of the Internet has forced communications companies to alter their
network build-out plans to include a larger amount of Internet-based equipment able to
carry data "packets" at a high speed.
With Ascend, Lucent will be able to better compete with the likes of Cisco Systems and
Nortel Networks, among others, in its bid for a piece of the Internet equipment pie.
Lucent will slice the technology it has acquired into five
segments. The firm plans to focus on the Internet core, using
voice-on-data networks, facilitating secure connections over
the Net using virtual private networking (VPN) technology,
associated services, and advanced uses of Internet protocol
(IP)-based software, according to a Lucent spokeswoman.
For the high-end market, Lucent now has several weapons,
including its own IP and asynchronous transfer mode
(ATM)-based network switches, as well as those of Ascend,
and the speedy routing technology it acquired from Nexabit.
Nexabit's switching technology is currently in tests.
After last week's Ascend shareholder vote, Lucent chief
executive Rich McGinn said the addition of the Alameda,
California-based firm will allow Lucent to offer a "soup to
nuts" approach.
"Lucent now stands head and shoulders above the
competition in its ability to deliver end-to-end,
communications networks to service providers," said
McGinn.
Ascend is now part of Lucent's newly crafted InterNetworking
systems unit.
Separately, Lucent and competitor Cisco announced late last week that they have ended
an ongoing patent infringement suit and plan to cross-license technology as part of the
settlement.
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