This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2008)

Lucent Technologies, Inc.

Lucent Technologies
Former type	Public
Industry	Telecommunications
Fate	Acquired by Alcatel SA
Predecessor(s)	Western Electric
Successor(s)	Alcatel-Lucent
Founded	1996
Defunct	2006
Headquarters	Murray Hill, New Jersey, United States
Revenue	$9.44 billion USD (2005)
Employees	30,500 (2006)
Parent	AT&T (1995-1996)

Lucent (officially Lucent Technologies, Inc.) was an American multinational technology company composed of what was formerly AT&T Technologies, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs. It was spun off from AT&T on September 30, 1996.

Lucent was acquired by Alcatel SA of France on December 1, 2006, forming Alcatel-Lucent.^[1]

History[link]

One of the primary reasons AT&T chose to spin off its equipment manufacturing business was to permit it to profit from sales to competing telecommunications providers; these customers had previously shown reluctance to purchase from a direct competitor. Bell Labs brought prestige to the new company, as well as the revenue from thousands of patents.

At the time of its spinoff, Lucent was placed under the leadership of Henry Schacht, who was brought in to oversee its transition from an arm of AT&T into an independent corporation. Richard McGinn succeeded Schacht as CEO in 1997. Lucent became a "darling" stock of the investment community in the late 1990s, rising from a split-adjusted spinoff price of $7.56/share to a high of $84. In 1997, Lucent acquired Milpitas based voice mail market leader Octel Communications Corporation for $2.1 billion, a move which immediately rendered the Business Systems Group profitable. By 1999 Lucent stock continued to soar and in that year Lucent acquired Ascend Communications, an Alameda, California-based manufacturer of communications equipment for US$24 billion. Lucent held discussions to acquire Juniper Networks but decided instead to build its own routers internally.

On January 6, 2000, Lucent made the first of a string of announcements that it had missed its quarterly estimates, and when it was later revealed that it had used dubious accounting and sales practices to generate some of its earlier quarterly numbers, Lucent fell from grace. In November 2000, it also disclosed to the SEC that it had a $125 million accounting error for the third quarter of 2000. Subsequently, its CFO, Deborah Hopkins, left the company in May 2001 with Lucent's stock at $9.06 whereas at the time she was hired it was at $46.82.^[2]

By October 2002, when its stock price bottomed at 55 cents per share, Henry Schacht had been brought back on an interim basis to replace McGinn. Patricia Russo was named permanent Chairman and CEO, succeeding Schacht who remained on the Board of Directors.^[3]

In April 2000, Lucent sold its Consumer Products unit to VTech & Consumer Phone Services. In October 2000, Lucent spun off its Business Systems arm into Avaya, Inc., and in June 2002, it spun off its microelectronics division into Agere Systems. The spinoffs of enterprise networking and wireless, the industry's key growth businesses from 2003 onward, meant that Lucent no longer had the capacity to serve this market. ^[4]

Lucent was reduced to 30,500 employees, down from about 165,000 employees at its zenith. The layoffs of so many experienced employees meant that the company was in a weakened position and unable to reestablish itself when the market recovered in 2003.^[4]

Lucent continued to be active in the areas of telephone switching, optical, data and wireless networking.

On April 2, 2006, Lucent announced a merger agreement with Alcatel, which was 1.5 times the size of Lucent.^[1] Serge Tchurk became non-executive chairman, and Russo served as CEO of the newly merged company, Alcatel-Lucent, until they were both forced to resign at the end of 2008. The merger failed to produce the expected synergies, and there were significant write-downs of Lucent's assets that Alcatel purchased.^[5]

Divisions[link]

Lucent was divided into several core groups:

• Network Solutions Group - serves landline/cellular telephone service providers by providing equipment & other solutions necessary to provide telephone service, including networking equipment
• Lucent Worldwide Services (LWS) - a division with customers around the world that provides network services to telecom companies and business. LWS's clients include AT&T & Verizon.
• Bell Labs - created in 1925 as the R&D firm of the Bell System. It was an AT&T subsidiary set up as dual ownership by AT&T and Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T. Bell Labs has accumulated over 31,000 patents in its existence, some of which include development of the LED and discovery of the measure of sound.

Murray Hill facility[link]

Lucent Headquarters

The Murray Hill anechoic chamber, built in 1940, is the world's oldest wedge-based anechoic chamber. The interior room measures approximately 30 feet (9.1 m) high by 28 feet (8.5 m) wide by 32 feet (9.8 m) deep. The exterior concrete and brick walls are about 3 feet (0.91 m) thick to keep outside noise from entering the chamber. The chamber absorbs over 99.995% of the incident acoustic energy above 200 Hz. At one time the Murray Hill chamber was cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's quietest room. It is possible to hear the sounds of skeletal joints and heart beats very prominently.

The Murray Hill facility is currently the global headquarters for Lucent Technologies. The Murray Hill facility also has the largest copper-roof in the world. When Lucent Technologies was experiencing financial troubles in 2000 and 2001, one out of every three fluorescent lights was turned off in the facility. The same was done in the Naperville and Allentown, Pennsylvania facilities for a while. The facility has a cricket field and features a nearby station from which enthusiasts can control RC airplanes and helicopters.

FCPA case[link]

According to its SEC filing, In April 2004 Lucent fired its president, COO, a marketing executive and a finance manager at its China operations for FCPA violations. These violations were uncovered through internal investigations triggered by the (unrelated) US DOJ and SEC probe into possible Lucent's FCPA violations in Saudi Arabia.

Logo[link]

The Lucent logo, the Innovation Ring,^[6] was designed by Landor Associates, a prominent San Francisco-based branding consultancy. One source inside Lucent says that the logo is actually a Zen Buddhist symbol for "eternal truth", the Enso, turned 90 degrees and modified. Another source says it represents the mythic ouroboros, a snake holding its tail in its mouth. Lucent's logo also has been said to represent constant re-creating and re-thinking.^[7]

After the logo was compared in the media to the ring a coffee mug leaves on paper, a Dilbert comic strip showed Dogbert as an overpaid consultant designing a new company logo; he takes a piece of paper that his coffee cup was sitting on and calls it the "Brown Ring of Quality".^[8] A telecommunication commentator referred to the logo as "a big red zero" and predicted financial losses.^[9]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Endlich, Lisa (2004). Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-2667-4. 

External links[link]

Wikinews has related news: Alcatel and Lucent will merge

v t e Telecommunications (general) History Beacons Broadcasting Communications satellites Computer networks Drums Electrical telegraphs Fax Heliographs Hydraulic telegraphs Internet Mass media Mobile phones Optical telegraphy Photophones Radio Radiotelephones Telegraphy Telephones The Telephone Cases Television Undersea telegraph lines Videophones Pioneers Edwin Howard Armstrong John Logie Baird Alexander Graham Bell Tim Berners-Lee Jagadish Chandra Bose Vint Cerf Claude Chappe Lee De Forest Philo Farnsworth Reginald Fessenden Elisha Gray Guglielmo Marconi Alexander Stepanovich Popov Johann Philipp Reis Nikola Tesla Alfred Vail Charles Wheatstone Vladimir K. Zworykin Media Coaxial cable Free-space optical Optical fiber Radio waves Telephone lines Terrestrial microwave Networks ARPANET BITNET Ethernet FidoNet ISDN Internet Local area Mobile NGN Packet switched Public Switched Telephone Radio Television Telex Wide area World Wide Web Wireless Geographic v t e Telecommunications in Africa Sovereign states Algeria Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Comoros Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon The Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Kenya Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Morocco Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda São Tomé and Príncipe Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa South Sudan Sudan Swaziland Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe States with limited recognition Azawad Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Somaliland Dependencies and other territories Canary Islands / Ceuta / Melilla / Plazas de soberanía (Spain) Madeira (Portugal) Mayotte / Réunion (France) Saint Helena / Ascension Island / Tristan da Cunha (United Kingdom) Western Sahara v t e Telecommunications in Asia Sovereign states Afghanistan Armenia Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Bhutan Brunei Burma (Myanmar) Cambodia People's Republic of China Cyprus East Timor (Timor-Leste) Egypt Georgia India Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel Japan Jordan Kazakhstan North Korea South Korea Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Lebanon Malaysia Maldives Mongolia Nepal Oman Pakistan Philippines Qatar Russia Saudi Arabia Singapore Sri Lanka Syria Tajikistan Thailand Turkey Turkmenistan United Arab Emirates Uzbekistan Vietnam Yemen States with limited recognition Abkhazia Nagorno-Karabakh Northern Cyprus Palestine Republic of China (Taiwan) South Ossetia Dependencies and other territories British Indian Ocean Territory Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Hong Kong Macau v t e Telecommunications in Europe Sovereign states Albania Andorra Armenia Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Kazakhstan Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Malta Moldova Monaco Montenegro Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia San Marino Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales States with limited recognition Abkhazia Kosovo Nagorno-Karabakh Northern Cyprus South Ossetia Transnistria Dependencies and other territories Åland Faroe Islands Gibraltar Guernsey Jersey Isle of Man Svalbard Other entities European Union v t e Telecommunications in North America Sovereign states Antigua and Barbuda Bahamas Barbados Belize Canada Costa Rica Cuba Dominica Dominican Republic El Salvador Grenada Guatemala Haiti Honduras Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Panama Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Trinidad and Tobago United States Dependencies and other territories Anguilla Aruba Bermuda Bonaire British Virgin Islands Cayman Islands Curaçao Greenland Guadeloupe Martinique Montserrat Navassa Island Puerto Rico Saint Barthélemy Saint Martin Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saba Sint Eustatius Sint Maarten Turks and Caicos Islands United States Virgin Islands v t e Telecommunications in Oceania Sovereign states Australia East Timor (Timor-Leste) Fiji Indonesia Kiribati Marshall Islands Federated States of Micronesia Nauru New Zealand Palau Papua New Guinea Samoa Solomon Islands Tonga Tuvalu Vanuatu Dependencies and other territories American Samoa Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Cook Islands Easter Island French Polynesia Guam Hawaii New Caledonia Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Pitcairn Islands Tokelau Wallis and Futuna v t e Telecommunications in South America Sovereign states Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Guyana Paraguay Peru Suriname Uruguay Venezuela Dependencies and other territories Aruba Bonaire Curaçao Falkland Islands French Guiana South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands