SBC to Acquire BellSouth
March 2006
SBC has agreed to acquire BellSouth for $67 billion. After the merger the two companies will operate under the AT&T name with AT&T’s CED Ed Whitacre serving as chairman and CEO. BellSouth’s CEO Duane Ackerman will serve as chairman and CEO of BellSouth operations for a transition period following the merger. The deal is expected to close within 12 months.
It is not clear how this will affect the companies IP TV plans. We expect that AT&T will move forward with its Project Lightspeed. We expect that BellSouth will adopt the Project Lightspeed architecture, which may not cause much delay in its IP TV plans, since AT&T was already lagging.
This will have the biggest effect on companies that were expecting to provide equipment to support BellSouth’s IP TV deployment. It is likely that this will have a negative affect on Tellabs’ FTTC system sales.
{Note: analyst comments are italicized}
Source: MRG, Inc., March 2006 IPTV Bulletin
TANDBERG Acquires SkyStream
March 2006
TANDBERG completed its acquisition of SkyStream. This merger moves TANDBERG from number 4 globally to number 2 after Tut, which has a commanding lead due the large number of its deployments in small U.S. Telcos. TANDBERG is now number 1 in Asia, number 2 in Europe, and number 2 in North America. Harmonic is number 1 in Europe and Tut is number 1 in North America.
This merger provides TANDBERG with a product range that includes its high quality and high price encoders along with the more cost effective units from SkyStream. This will allow TANDBERG to address a full range of market requirements.
{Note: analyst comments are italicized}
For more information, see our IPTV Market Leaders Report
Source: MRG, Inc., March 2006 IPTV Bulletin
Alcatel and Lucent Merge
March 2006
Alcatel and Lucent have agreed to merge. The combined company will be number one globally in wireline and number two in mobile technologies.
The resulting company will be given a new name and will be 60% owned by Alcatel stockholders and 40% owned by Lucent stockholders. It will be headquartered in Paris.
This merger will give the resulting company the number commanding lead and the one position in the IP TV market. It will also be number one in Europe, number two in North America, and number five in Asia according to the numbers in our March 2006 IPTV Market Leader Report.
Achieving the number one position in IP TV is a good thing, but it is not nearly enough to justify a merger of this scale on its own. IP TV is one part of a full portfolio of wireline and wireline products and services.
{Note: analyst comments are italicized}
For more information, see our IPTV Market Leaders Report
Source: MRG, Inc., March 2006 IPTV Bulletin
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