Lucent sticks with enterprise
Lucent Technologies is still betting on its enterprise strategy bringing rewards when operators make their final decisions on 3G infrastructure suppliers.
Speaking to Mobile Europe, Lucent Technologies EMEA president Dave Poticny said that the company would stick with its strategy of trying to leverage its profile with enterprise customers to push its High-Speed Data Solutions strategy.
"We have been pushing High-Speed Data for enterprise customers for two years and as far as we can see it is still the right path. There is a lot of attention from operators on the idea of data cards and High-Speed Data. 3 has primarily targeted consumers so we are still pushing the corporate message with other operators who are interested in the enterprise play.
Poticny said Lucent has tested and optimised its system to be ready to meet the demands of enterprise data users.
"We decided to test and prepare the difficult applications of it [the base station] first. We anticipated that if we had that right then voice would be less complicated.The pilots have proved the point, these being real commercial users with real companies."
Poticny said that the enterprise market is the most difficult for operators to get into, as they are used to selling into consumer markets.
"I don't believe the industry in general knows how to sell high speed data to enterprises," he said. Lucent's knowledge of selling to businesses would give operators a channel to enterprise customers. "It's a long term sell.
"Our whole sales objective is to bring enterprise customers to our customers. So we're helping them with that until they get good at selling to the enterprise itself.
"People say 3G is about selling the base station and it turns out it is about a lot more than that. Ultimately 3G will be a service definition."
Poticny said there is still opportunity for Lucent to pick up 3G contracts in Europe.
"Most companies have picked their first round suppliers. Yet a company like Telefonica didn't even implement its first round supplier and went to a re-bidding process. Other companies are doing the rest of their build out and re-bidding in six months,.
"Some operators are not completely happy with their supplier and are shifting.".
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