Alcatel to lose AT&T deal to Ericsson?

According to a report in the Financial Times, Alcatel-Lucent [1] is poised to lose a WCDMA network infrastructure deal it had with AT&T to Swedish rival Ericsson. The original contract, which was inked in 2004, awarded Ericsson $900 million, Lucent $700 million and Siemens $400 million. Ericsson's 45 percent stake could get a whole lot bigger. The report also indicated that AT&T considered dropping Alcatel-Lucent altogether, but decided to retain the vendor for now.

"We continue to be a critical WCDMA supplier to AT&T," Alcatel-Lucent said in a statement. "Our market share has remained relatively stable and we continue to work to meet our commitments to maintain our market share. To speculate otherwise is both inaccurate and misleading."

Alcatel-Lucent's board recently urged CEO Patricia Russo to come up with a comeback plan for the struggling vendor, which has had trouble integrating since its merger last year. That motion indicated to many analysts that Russo was on her way out, but the board quickly issued a statement [2] to reassure the industry that it fully backed Russo in her position as CEO.

For more on Alcatel-Lucent's woes:
- read this article [3] from the Financial Times