PARIS—Alcatel Inc.’s board of directors is meeting in Paris today to review its “merger of equals” with longtime rival telecom equipment vendor Lucent Technologies Inc.
Though the French company said it’s not likely to reach a final decision about the merger during the meeting, Reuben Chaudhury, director of the communications practice at Mercer Management Consulting, said, “I expect that within the next two or three weeks, we should have a pretty good indication of what’s going to happen. If not, we can assume it’s not going to happen anytime soon.”
Meanwhile, Alcatel announced two new GSM contracts worth $29 million with Shanxi Mobile Communications, a China Mobile subsidiary. Alcatel said one of the contracts is the company’s eleventh GSM network expansion with this operator; the other is a GSM/GPRS network contract. The contracts run through Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel’s flagship Chinese company.
