Below is an excerpt from a 12/9/96 CommunicationsWeek article entitled "THE CLASS OF 1997 -- Survey reveals the companies to watch next year":
5 -- Lucent Technologies Inc.
Unplugged
Lucent, now out from under the AT&T monolith, is poised to bloom on its own. It already has the most PBX and DACS equipment installed in the United States. Now it wants to lead the wireless revolution and make its mark in data-networking equipment, too.
Next year will be the one when PCS service launches from The Big Three
and others. Lucent's PCS minicell devices, which it builds in its new
manufacturing plant in a Mount Olive, N.J., facility dedicated to PCS, will fuel services from AT&T, Primeco and Sprint, as will its 5ESS-2000 switch that handles both wire and wireless traffic.
Although Lucent's minicell devices support both AT&T's TDMA and
CDMA, Lucent already is exerting its independence from AT&T here.
"The most preferred standard will be CDMA," said Bob Sellinger,
director of PCS for AT&T; Lucent, he said, has about 60 percent of the
CDMA equipment market. He added: "CDMA calls are the quality of
wireline, with no snaps, crackles or pops."
On the software side, Lucent's billing, over-the-air activation and
operations management software are likely to run PCS services behind
the scenes. Sprint is one of Lucent's first big customers in this area. Also look for Lucent's X.500-based directory software to become available in the first quarter, aimed at Internet and other data service providers.
The Directory Server product will allow records to be retrieved using the hot new Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) backed by the
Internet Engineering Task Force and Netscape Communications Corp.
"Lucent doesn't have a large portfolio of data products of its own," said Rick Malone, an analyst at Vertical Systems Group Inc., Dedham, Mass. But with its large router contract with Bay Networks, as well as other deals, it is now filling in the gaps, he said. |
