lengthy feature in sat's washington post. not a shareholder, just local with a penchant for telecoms.
the first few paragraphs and the url follow.
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French Giant Rises in Va.
Alcatel Marches Aggressively Into U.S. Telecommunications Industry
By Stephanie Stoughton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 18, 1998
In a nondescript brick building off Route 7 in Ashburn in Loudoun County, the French conglomerate Alcatel Alsthom SA is hoping to unlock key markets in the U.S. telecommunications industry for its advanced products that help form the guts of communications networks.
Although the Paris-based company is one of the world's top five suppliers of telecommunications equipment, it's largely unrecognized in the United States, where the market is dominated by firms such as Lucent Technologies Inc. and Northern Telecom Ltd.
But from its facility in Ashburn and other U.S. sites in Texas, North Carolina and elsewhere, Alcatel is trying to become a serious player, overcoming its shyness with its better-financed and better-known U.S. rivals. One big challenge: It remains weak in Internet-based technology, though no one company has managed to gather all the pieces of the merging voice and data technologies, analysts said.
"It's not like the CEO of Lucent wakes up every day and says, 'I'm worried about Alcatel,' " said Luke Szymczak, an analyst with Prudential Securities Inc. in New York. "I don't think they lose sleep over it."
Yet the big U.S. telecom manufacturers are starting to hear Alcatel's footsteps. Serge Tchuruk, Alcatel's chairman and chief executive, has transformed the once-troubled French giant into a Wall Street "darling in the last 18 months," said Jeffrey Pittsburg, an analyst with Goldis-Pittsburg Institutional Services in New York.
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