Alcatel and Lucent to Merge

Cappella writes "It is confirmed. Alcatel and Lucent are combining to form a USD $25 billion entity. This marks a new wave of telecommunications company consolidation in the next few months to come." They first tried to work out a merger five years ago, but finally, at long last, it's come to fruition.

How long can this consolidation go on for ?

[Anonymous Coward]

will Wall St. be happy when there is 1 company in the whole world that owns everything ? what happens then ? do we start the economy from scratch again ?

seems like we are on a 1 way road to nowhere, its not a matter of if but when, unless of course unlimited growth and profits has managed to beat infinity

So maybe my LU stock will finally rise???

[Anonymous Coward]

So maybe my LU stock will finally rise???

Re:AT&T

[fm6]

Since the new company will be headquartered in Paris, it would have to be French Electric.

Naperville

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know what this means for jobs in Lucent's Naperville location?

Re:How long can this consolidation go on for ?

[cubicledrone]

They've laid off over 100,000 people in the past couple of years, and are now looking at another 9,000 or so with this merger.

Oh yeah. Now that's free market capitalism at it's best! What? No, that's what "free market" means: shit all over the wage earners.

Now they can start figuring out ways to fuck over customers.

Saves on incest costs..

[Mowie_X]

The whole industry is very incestuous. It will save a lot of money from both companies kitty used to lure employees from the other. Don't count this as minor savings either. It was not uncommon at all for Lucent to fly Cisco/Nortel employees from Can to US for an interview at the spur of the moment -- including putting them up in hotel, costs, etc...

I do suspect this will lead to a lot of layoffs however. Do they really need 2 wireless divisions doing exactly the same thing?

Does Bush know?

[tootlemonde]

Back at the beginning of Clinton's first term, lobbyists from Western Electric alerted him that the White House switchboard was a product of Northern Telecom. NorTel is nominally a Canadian company but this particular switch was made by its Raleigh, N.C. plant that employed 20,000 American workers and was installed by an American company.

Clinton had the system ripped out and replaced by a good ole Western Electric product. Lucent is the successor company to Western Electric. Unless the something has changed in the intervening years, the French now control the White House telecom system.