Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) announced today that, after all regulatory approval have been met, the acquisition of Nortel's UMTS radio access business (UTRAN) and related assets has been completed on December 31st, 2006. In recent weeks, the two companies have achieved a number of significant milestones, the most important being the signature of the definitive agreement on December 4th, 2006.
Nortel received a closing cash payment of US$ 320 million less significant deductions.
With this acquisition, one in four UMTS operators - about 40 customers around the world - use Alcatel-Lucent UMTS solutions. Together with strengthened R&D and a broad products and solutions portfolio, Alcatel-Lucent is now uniquely positioned to lead the network technological evolutions from 3G to 4G - relying on its OFDMA, SDR and MIMO* expertise - to address the customers' needs of today and tomorrow while realizing economies of scale.
"This acquisition will enable the development teams to leverage additional capabilities from the integration into the broader Alcatel-Lucent and we count on the focus of the teams to deliver superior performance in the UMTS domain going forward", said Vivek Badrinath, France Telecom Group EVP Information Technology Networks & product Support.
Commenting on the deal, Boris Nemsic, CEO of mobilkom austria said, "we count on Alcatel-Lucent to serve the needs of mobilkom group moving forward".
