NXTcomm: Alcatel-Lucent collects carrier contracts, acquires Motive

Alcatel-Lucent had a big day Tuesday, announcing at NXTcomm some major carrier deals and a new technology development involving provider backbone bridging, and separately unveiling the acquisition of Motive for about $68 million. The carrier contracts included a $1 billion deal with China Mobile to provide the carrier with TD-SCDMA gear and other equipment for its 3G build-out; an IP-MPLS deployment project with U.S. independent telco Embarq; and a IP service router contract with BT. The China Mobile deal comes shortly after Alca-Lu also announced a contract with leading wireline carrier China Telecom.

The deal with Embarq is the vendor's first IP technology project with that telco. At BT, Alcatel-Lucent already has seen it service router deployed, but now the services being supported are expanding from 106 exchanges to about 600 exchanges.

The vendor also announced it is combining PBB technology with virtual private LAN service in networks where VPLS is already heavily used. KPN Telecom in The Netherlands is hosting the first deployment of the combined solution. Lindsay Newell, vice president of marketing for Alcatel-Lucent's IP division, said at the show that four major carriers-KPN, BT, Verizon and France Telecom- already support a draft standard for PBB/VPLS integration.

Regarding the Motive buy, Alcatel-Lucent has been working with the remote subscriber management specialist for about three years.

For more:
- check out this coverage [1] of the China Mobile deal at India's Economic Times
- see this story [2] about PBB and VPLS at Telephony
- find out more [3] about the Motive acquisition at Light Reading Europe

Related articles:
Alcatel-Lucent recently announced new service management adapters Alcatel-Lucent report [4]
Embarq recently decided to outsource voice network management Embarq report [5]