Lucent buys VoIP manufacturer

Lucent, the manufacturing arm of AT&T, just bought Telica, a manufacturer of VoIP equipment. As I've written recently, AT&T seems to understand the potential of VoIP to revive the companies fortunes. AT&T has floundered ever since the breakup in the mid-eighties.

The most recent mess was at AT&T Wireless, which was apparently run by a hapless and arrogant group of what former AT&T folks call "Bellheads," which are company people that can't step outside the traditional boundaries of the the "old" telephone business.

But AT&T is making all the right moves--they recently announced $20 unlimited local AND long distance VoIP service, firing a shot across the bows of the regional phone companies (e.g. Verizon, SBC, Qwest, etc).

The purchase of Telica gives them the ability to sell their own equipment to their VoIP customers--a nice double play.

The most interesting part of the article was that Telica says they have sold three million VoIP handsets. Yes, that means three million VoIP users from just this one company. That matches up pretty well with estimates of 4-5 million VoIP users in the United States.

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