'More bang for bucks' with Lucent

By RICHARD BRADDELL

WELLINGTON - Telecom has named US-based Lucent Technologies as the successful bidder for its $200 million CDMA cellular network, while the contract has also gone to Lucent for the $A450 million network to be built for Australian subsidiary AAPT.

The announcement will come as a blow, not just for Canadian-based Nortel which was the other contender for the New Zealand contract, but also for Korea's Samsung which had been named as supplier for AAPT's CDMA network prior to Telecom taking majority control last year.

Telecom's choice of Lucent for both companies reflects an intention to operate the two cellular businesses much more closely to produce cost savings worth "tens of millions of dollars".

"Both Telecom and AAPT are getting a great deal more bang for their buck," chief executive Theresa Gattung said.

AAPT's chief executive, Larry Williams, said earlier this week that the two companies' cellular businesses might also be joined up as a standalone operation and possibly floated.

Among benefits of the Lucent contract are seamless roaming between the two networks, and a relatively straightforward path to third generation technology as it becomes available. Current second generation CDMA technology will also be able to provide relatively high speed mobile internet access at up to 144kbps.

The decision to bypass Samsung was in part due to the nature of its offering. In addition to a limited handset offering, Samsung apparently does not offer the open standards offered by Lucent which enable ready integration into fixed wire networks.

Telecom's choice of Lucent may also reflect its recent move to align itself with leaders in their fields such as EDS and Microsoft.

The contract will be Lucent's first big deal in New Zealand.