Network specialist Alcatel-Lucent announced on Thursday that it has signed a contract with Saudi Telecom Co to expand, extend and upgrade its existing network with the aim of enabling the operator to serve an additional two million customers by the end of 2010. Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will provide its packet optical transport solution for DSLAM traffic aggregation and Ethernet business services, along with its DSL and GPON /MSAN technology. The company will also leverage its services expertise in the areas of project management, network analysis, software integration, integration services and technical support services to deliver a true turnkey services solution. Once the upgrade is complete, Saudi Telecom will be able to offer all customers triple play services such as IPTV and converged communications. Although no specific details of the value of the contract were revealed, Alcatel-Lucent indicated it was a ‘multi-million Euro' figure. Meanwhile, the head of Alcatel-Lucent said on Thursday that deals were not the best solution for the company's problems. Some investors, analysts and executives at rival telecom group Nokia-Siemens Networks believe that another round of consolidation could be in the offing in the telecom gear sector to offset pressure on pricing and margins. “I've said many times before, M&A (mergers and acquisitions) is not the way out of our problems. We need to fix our own stuff,” Alcatel-Lucent Chief Executive Ben Verwaayen at the ETRE technology conference in Paris. When asked whether he envisaged buying smaller companies to gain access to promising technologies, Verwaayen said acquisitions were not always the right solution and that partnerships could also boost innovation.
