Alcatel-Lucent and NEC in wireless broadband joint venture

13 February 2008

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC have announced the start of a broad collaboration to develop advanced end-to-end communications solutions leading to a broader alliance in the future to develop end-to-end third-generation (3G) CDMA-based solutions and a wide range of advanced IP-based solutions, such as optical transmission, IP service routing, and IMS-based communications services.

The companies say they will also investigate collaborating in developing IT solutions for service providers - such as service application solutions (e.g. streaming, e-commerce, etc) together with the servers and storage products on which those solutions depend.

As a first step in this collaboration, Alcatel-Lucent and NEC have decided to form a joint venture that will focus on the development of long term evolution (LTE) wireless broadband access solutions.

These solutions will support the network evolution of leading customers around the world, such as NTT DoCoMo, who has already selected NEC as a vendor for commercial service deployment of its Super 3G (LTE) project, and Verizon, with whom Alcatel-Lucent has already initiated a LTE trial programme. Through this joint development effort, the two companies intend to accelerate the availability of next-generation wireless solutions.

Leveraging the common LTE product strategy and platform of the joint venture, Alcatel-Lucent and NEC will each manage delivery, project execution and dedicated support to their respective customers.

Under this joint venture, the two companies will pool their existing research and development resources and leverage market-proven expertise in key technologies on which next-generation wireless access is based, such as IP, multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA).