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Feb. 14, 2008

Alcatel-Lucent, NEC and LTE said yesterday they are forming a joint venture to focus on the development of LTE.

The new initiative will bring together NEC´s relationship with NTT DoCoMo, which already selected NEC as a vendor for its LTE project.

Alcatel-Lucent already has an ongoing relationship with Verizon Wireless, which has initiated an LTE trial program with the French-based company.

The two hope to accelerate the availability of next-generation solutions, with the idea that it´s best to combine efforts now when they´re still in the relatively early R&D stages, a spokesman said.

No details have yet been announced with regard to a name for the new joint venture.

The two companies plan to make their first commercial releases available some time next year.

In the future, the collaboration is expected to expand into end-to-end 3-G CDMA-based solutions, as well as a range of advanced IP-based solutions, such as optical transmission, IP service routing and IMS-based communications services.

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC also will investigate collaborating in developing IT solutions for service providers, such as service application solutions, together with the servers and storage products on which those solutions depend.

In other news, Alcatel-Lucent announced plans to develop and distribute a prepaid option to wireless operators for use with the BlackBerry platform.

The option enables BlackBerry users to track their minutes and data they have used against the prepaid amount remaining on their account. Alcatel-Lucent and Research In Motion (RIM) already have distributed a solution in several countries, including China.

On. Feb. 6, Alcatel-Lucent reported another quarterly loss and expects to incur further losses in the next two quarters as well.

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Source: Alcatel-Lucent.

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