Alcatel-Lucent said it expects the global telecom infrastructure market will decline by between 8 percent and 12 percent this year. However, company CEO Pierre Barnabe said during a French telecom conference last week that while new investments appeared to be slowing, demand for capacity is staying resilient.
Barnabe also said the company is remaining focused on the wireless business, especially now that it has won a multi-billion-dollar contract with Verizon Wireless for Long Term Evolution (LTE) infrastructure. He characterized the contract has one that "had definitely anchored us strongly in that business."
Moreover, NTT DoCoMo recently awarded an LTE backhaul contract to Alca-Lu. The company is supplying multipoint Ethernet connections using its 1850 transport service switches to support operations, administration, security and network management. DoCoMo has stated that it plans to deploy LTE starting next year having demonstrated downlink rates of 250Mbit/s in outdoor R&D trials.
But there is some pressure on Alca-Lu. Financial analysts recently downgraded Alca-Lu to underperform following reports that Nortel had agreed to sell its CDMA and LTE business to Nokia Siemens Networks.
For more:
- see TeleGeography
Related articles:
Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson win Verizon LTE deal
Time ticking on NSN-Nortel LTE integration
Alcatel-Lucent announces CDMA/LTE combo infrastructure