Alcatel-Lucent invests in WiMax chip company
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InfoWorld - Alcatel-Lucent has invested in WiMax chip maker Sequans Communications, the latest show of support for the emerging long-range wireless networking technology.
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Lucent Technologies has averted a potentially embarrassing delay of its shareholder vote on a merger with Alcatel,Â settling two suits by shareholdersÂ who said the deal doesn't maximize shareholder value.
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(InfoWorld) - Investors have a wide range of technology to choose from in the stocks they buy, and ClearwireÂ  is set to add more WiMax to the list, when it offers 20 million shares for sale at between $23-$25 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The Kirkland, Washington wireless broadband Internet service provider Tuesday issued a preliminary prospectus for a share sale with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and said it planned to launch the public offering as soon as possible after the share sale is registered. It did not give a specific date. Clearwire will become one of just a few WiMax companies listed on a U.S. stock market, and one of the most high profile due to its relationships withÂ IntelÂ andÂ Motorola. The listing may also be a sign that word ofÂ WiMax technology is spreading. The popularity of sipping coffee at Starbucks while reading e-mails on a laptop PC has grown along with wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi. WiMax aims to replace Wi-Fi as a speedier service with far wider ranging access. Clearwire will list under the stock ticker code, CLWR. Clearwire is also offering 3 million additional shares to the investment banking firms underwriting the sale, and if all 23 million shares sell out at the mid-range price, $24, Clearwire will pocket $513 million from the sale, it said in the SEC filing. The money will mainly be used to finance its business. It has spent millions expanding its WiMax network, and expects to need more to continue growing. "As Clearwire is at an early stage of development, we cannot anticipate with certainty what our earnings, if any, will be in any future period. However, we expect to incur significant net losses as we develop and deploy our network in new and existing markets, expand our services and pursue our business strategy," it said in the filing. The company has lost money ever since it opened, and estimated its total indebtedness as of Sep. 30, last year, at approximately $755.7 million. But the company has some big backers to help keep it running, mainly companies promoting WiMax. Intel's venture capital arm invested $600 million in Clearwire last year in one of its single biggest deals ever. Intel Capital commonly invests in companies tied to Intel strategies aimed at growing its core microprocessor business. WiMax has been a major push for Intel over the past few years. The company's line of Centrino notebook PC chips, which put Wi-Fi into portable PCs, was wildly successful on the market, and some analysts say the company could be a big winner with a similar chip package developed around WiMax. Clearwire and Intel have also agreed to jointly develop and promote a mobile WiMax service offering as a co-branded service available only over Clearwire's WiMax in the U.S., according to the prospectus, to target users of laptops, ultramobile PCs, and other mobile devices. Once Clearwire completes its share sale, Intel will still hold a 26.6 percent stake in the company, or 36.76 million shares, while Motorola will hold a 12.9 percent stake, or 16.67 million shares, according to the prospectus. Clearwire sold its wireless broadband equipment business to Motorola last year, and indicated in the prospectus that it will rely on Motorola to supply equipment for its network. Clearwire currently offers broadband wireless services in the U.S. and Europe. Its subscribers rose to 206,000 as of the end of last year, from just 1,000 on Sep. 30, 2004, it said. Its subscriber base has grown despite wireline alternatives for users, including broadband cable modems and DSL (digital subscriber line) Internet service. As of the end of last year, Clearwire services were available to 9.6 million people, including 8.6 million throughout the U.S., and one million in Brussels, Belgium and Dublin, Ireland, the company said. WiMax base stations can send broadband Internet signals to far greater distances than the Wi-Fi technology that WiMax is meant to replace. Although estimates vary on how far WiMax signals can go, in densely populated cities, where users are not likely to be positioned within sight of access points, the distance should be between 2 km and 4 km. A few of the other listed companies in the WiMax field include device maker Proxim Wireless, service provider Alltel, and WiMax network equipment maker, Alvarion. The stock ticker codes of the three companies are PROX, AT, and ALVR, respectively.
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An emerging wireless  communications technology called WiMAX, which can blanket  entire cities with high-speed Internet connections, will rival  DSL and cable as the preferred way to connect homes and  businesses to the Internet, Intel Corp. said on Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - Sprint Nextel plans to cooperate with enterprises on the rollout of its WiMax mobile broadband network, letting the customers install and own short-range base stations in their buildings with automatic roaming onto the carrier's WiMax network outside. Enterprises will be a big market for the WiMax service, said Atish Gude, senior vice president of mobile broadband operations at Sprint, in an interview Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The service, planned for a national rollout next year under the Xohm brand name, is designed to deliver Internet access at megabits per second on a standards-based technology that has been heavily promoted by Intel. For enterprises, it will be similar to Wi-Fi, only more secure and with easy roaming onto a carrier network that spans whole metropolitan areas, Gude said. Sprint has sent out an RFP (request for proposals) for WiMax femtocells, or miniature base stations meant to serve a home or other small area, Gude confirmed. He expects large enterprises to buy and deploy femtocells for consistent coverage across their offices and campuses, maintaining control over them as they do with current Wi-Fi networks. Sprint will work with enterprises and building owners to provide roaming onto the carrier network from WiMax femtocells or, in some cases, indoor Wi-Fi networks, he said. The small cells won't be needed in homes because the main network will be able to deliver good in-home coverage by itself, according to Gude. Earlier this week, Sprint started selling femtocells for its CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) phone network in a trial rollout aimed at homes. The carrier and its partner, wireless broadband company Clearwire, will run Xohm on licensed spectrum but plan a business model far different from that of 3G mobile data offerings. Customers will be able to use Xohm for any type of application on the Internet, and client devices will be sold at retail stores without the subsidies mobile operators typically provide for phones. The technology could be included in a wide range of devices including handhelds, cameras, and even cars, the companies said. WiMax will go into future notebooks through Intel's Echo Peak chipset, a module for the company's next-generation Montevina platform for notebooks, which Intel announced Wednesday. Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, and other manufacturers have said they will include WiMax in notebooks in 2008, according to Intel. Montevina notebooks are to hit the market in May. Although WiMax devices will be up against 3G products that are subsidized by carriers, the ability to buy the device separately from the service will be a real advantage, Insight64 analyst Nathan Brookwood said. Consumers don't like having to sign up for a two-year mobile plan as they typically do in the U.S. before they even know whether the carrier's service works in their homes. And notebooks, for example, sell without subsidies today, he pointed out. Xohm will be sold in a variety of ways, including monthly subscriptions, short on-the-spot purchases and "try-and-buy" offers with a period of free service, the companies said. They haven't disclosed pricing. Together, Sprint and Clearwire plan to reach 100 million U.S. residents next year, in about 30 markets including some small cities. Sprint plans to have trials in place in Chicago and the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area by the end of this year. Clearwire already has a pre-standard network with about 300,000 customers across the country and plans to deploy standard mobile WiMax in the Portland, Oregon, area in the first half of next year. It is running a trial there now.
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MURRAY HILL, NJ - Lucent Technologies has released a software upgrade for its wireless equipment that will allow operators to support high-speed data packet access (HSDPA) connections in 3G networks.
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Almost a year after Sprint Nextel Corp. announced it would develop a mobile broadband network using WiMax technology, the wireless provider said Thursday it was teaming up with competing provider Clearwire Corp. to help build it.
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By Izwan Ismail  FANCY having a phone that can switch between a Wi-Fi network and a GSM (global system for mobile communications) line? Alcatel- Lucent already has the solution to allow this new concept of enterprise communication to take place.
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Network equipment companies Alcatel SA  and Lucent Technologies Inc.  said on Thursday they had completed their merger, creating one of the world's biggest suppliers of network equipment for mobile phones and high-speed Internet communications.
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Underlining its WiMAX ambitions, world number one chipmaker Intel has disclosed technical details of its upcoming wireless broadband chip.
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The Taiwanese government added several companies to a growing list of WiMax wireless broadband technology partners on Monday, including Alcatel-Lucent SA, Motorola Inc., Nokia Siemens Networks BV and Sprint Nextel Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Alcatel-Lucent has invested in WiMax chip maker Sequans Communications, the latest show of support for the emerging long-range wireless networking technology. The companies did not reveal the size of the investment but said it extends a $24 million round of financing that Sequans raised last year. The companies are both based in France and have worked together in the past. Last year they said they would make a low-cost end-user WiMax device for developing countries. They expect to start production of that product in the second quarter. Alcatel, whichÂ completed its merger with LucentÂ late last year, has alsoÂ worked with Intel, a Sequans competitor. Alcatel and Intel have said often that they would collaborate on the development of WiMax technologies, including field trials of new products. Before the merger, Lucent sold WiMax products using gear from Alvarion, which uses Intel chips. Intel worked aggressively to develop a market for WiMax. Nonetheless, other chip makers including Sequans, Fujitsu, and Wavesat have emerged as competitors. Motorola also invested an undisclosed sum in Sequans late last year. After years of development, WiMax is just beginning to pick up steam. U.S. operator Sprint NextelÂ intends to build a WiMax network, andÂ ClearwireÂ has built several networks in Europe and parts of the U.S.
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WaveSat this week began shipping a chip that it says is the first to comply fully with the IEEE 802.16-2004 wireless broadband standard, commonly known as WiMax.
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Company preps single chip WiMax compliant part for use in wireless broadband gear.
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Manufacturers prepare for Sprint Nextel's and Clearwire's Xohm WiMax service.
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(InfoWorld) - Alcatel-Lucent cut its revenue forecast for the year on Thursday, underscoring the challenges the newly merged company faces in a highly competitive communications equipment industry. The company now expects its revenue to be flat or up slightly in 2007, compared with an earlier forecast that it would grow in the mid-single digits along with the overall carrier market. (Both estimates use a constant exchange rate between the euro and U.S. dollar.) In its new forecast, Alcatel-Lucent cited discussions with wireless customers in North America that led it to anticipate weaker spending than it had expected among them this year. Growth in sales volume won't make up for falling prices, Alcatel-Lucent said. As a result, the company expects only to break even in the current quarter. In the second quarter, which ended June 30, it reported an adjusted net loss of â¬336 million, or $455 million as of June 30, the last day in the period being reported. France'sÂ Alcatel bought troubled U.S. infrastructure vendor Lucent last yearÂ as the companies faced Asian competitors, such as Huawei Technologies, as well as consolidation among telecommunications carriers and vendors. It cut 3,800 jobs in the first half of the year and still expects to reach a target of â¬600 million in pre-tax savings from the merger this year, butÂ the merger hasn't led to strong results. The market has lashed out: Alcatel-Lucent's shares (ALA) on the New York Stock Exchange started this year over $15 and are now below $10. On Thursday's news, the stock fell $0.88 to close at $9.16. The company is taking steps to speed up its post-merger restructuring and carry out additional focused cost-cutting plans, CEO Patricia Russo said in a prepared statement on Thursday. Alcatel-Lucent does expect some improvement from quarter to quarter. It forecast third-quarter revenue up slightly from the second quarter and a strong increase in the last quarter of the year. Bright spots in its worldwide business include the wireline and enterprise network business, as well as sales in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Shareholders of Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies Inc. approved the companies' merger plansÂ Thursday, clearing one of the last hurdles to a mammoth consolidation in the communications equipment business.