Lucent Technologies
| Lucent Technologies | |
| Company type | Public (NYSE: LU) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | Murray Hill, New Jersey (1996) |
| Headquarters | Murray Hill, New Jersey |
Key people | Patricia Russo, Chairman, and CEO |
| Products | See [1] |
| Revenue |  $9.44 billion USD |
Number of employees | 30,500 (2005) |
| Website | www.lucent.com |
 | The neutrality of this article is disputed. |
On September 30 1996, AT&T spun off its Systems and Technology units (AT&T Technologies, Inc., the former Western Electric), along with the famous Bell Laboratories, to form a new company named Lucent Technologies NYSE: LU, under the leadership of Henry Schacht, who was brought in to oversee the transition of Lucent from an arm of AT&T into an independent corporation.
One of the primary reasons for the spinoff was to allow AT&T's equipment manufacturing business to profit from sales to competing telecommunications providers; these customers had previously shown reluctance at purchasing from a direct competitor. Bell Labs brought prestige to the new company, as well as the revenue from thousands of patents.
Richard McGinn succeeded Henry Schacht as CEO in 1997. Lucent became a "darling" stock of the investment community in the late 1990s, rising from a split adjusted spin-off price of $7.56/share to a high of $84. However, on January 6, 2000, Lucent announced the first of a string of announcements that it had missed its quarterly estimates, and when it was later revealed that it had used dubious accounting and sales practices to generate some of its earlier quarterly numbers, Lucent fell from grace. By October, 2002, when its stock price bottomed at 55 cents per share, Henry Schacht had been brought back to replace Rich McGinn.
In 1998, Lucent sold its consumer telephone equipment business to VTech, who renamed the division Advanced American Telephones. In 1999, Lucent acquired Ascend Communications, an Alameda, CA based manufacturer of communications equipment for $24B USD. In October, 2000, Lucent spun off its business telecommunications arm into Avaya, Inc., and in June, 2002, it spun off its microelectronics division into Agere Systems.
In 2002, Lucent began making significant cuts to the health care and retirement benefits of many of its 125,000 retirees. Although Lucent contends these and future cuts are necessary for its survival, they have nevertheless generated a continuing flow of negative publicity in the news media, and many point to the cuts as an example of why there is a need for legislation to protect American retiree health care benefits.
Today, Lucent has 30,500 employees, down from about 165,000 employees at its zenith. Lucent is active in the areas of telephone switching, optical, data and wireless networking. Patricia Russo currently heads the company.
The company designs and delivers the systems, services and software that drive next-generation communications networks. Backed by Bell Labs research and development, Lucent uses its strengths in mobility, optical, software, data and voice networking technologies, as well as services, to create new revenue-generating opportunities for its customers, while enabling them to quickly deploy and better manage their networks. Lucent's customer base includes communications service providers, governments and enterprises worldwide.
Lucent's market vision is converged services -- creating networks that deliver communications services that are simple, secure and seamless; personal and portable; for people at work, home or anywhere in between. With two operating units -- Network Solutions Group and Lucent Worldwide Services -- Lucent is organized to best meet the needs of its customers and helps those customers create, build and maintain the most innovative, reliable and cost-effective networks.
Business Groups
Network Solutions Group
Lucent Technologies' Network Solutions Group is dedicated to helping service providers capture the market opportunities being created by the growing demand for blended lifestyle services. To better support our wireline, mobile, and converged customers, Lucent is combining its wireless and wireline business units to form a single, unified organization squarely focused on delivering the vision, architectures, and solutions needed to enable the rapid, cost-effective delivery of integrated voice, data, video and multimedia services to subscribers, anytime, anywhere.
Lucent Worldwide Services
Lucent Worldwide Services (LWS) is one of the industry's most experienced and knowledgeable network services organization. With technicians, network designers, consultants and engineers, LWS serves the world's largest service providers, enterprises and government institutions in countries around the world.
Bell Labs
Bell Labs is the largest R&D organization focused on the communications networking needs of the U.S. Government and service providers around the world and is the leading source of new technologies found in communications networking today. Bell Labs' innovations span numerous diverse fields such as physical sciences/ nanotechnology, computer sciences and software, mathematical sciences, advanced wireless and wireline networking research, and network security, standards, and planning. Bell Labs title
Researchers at Bell Labs have received six Nobel Prizes in Physics, nine U.S. National Medals of Science and eight U.S. National Medals of Technology®. Our scientists and engineers also have earned more than 31,000 patents since 1925 and have played a pivotal role in inventing or perfecting most of the key communications technologies in use today.
Lucent Technologies Quality Policy
From their website- "We will safeguard the customers' trust by building the capability to execute flawlessly on the promises we make."
Diversity
Lucent received a 100% rating on the first Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign in 2002. They have maintained this rating in 2003 and 2004. In addition, the company was named one of the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" in 2004 by Working Mother magazine.
Murray Hill facility
The Murray Hill anechoic chamber, built in 1940, is the world's oldest wedge-based anechoic chamber. The interior room measures approximately 30 feet high by 28 feet wide by 32 feet deep. The exterior cement and brick walls are about 3 feet thick to keep outside noise from entering the chamber. The chamber absorbs over 99.995% of the incident acoustic energy above 200 Hz. At one time the Murray Hill chamber was cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's quietest room. It is possible to hear the sounds of bone joints and heart beats very prominently.
The Murray Hill facility is currently the global headquarters for Lucent Technologies. The Murray Hill facility also has the largest copper-roof in the world. When Lucent Technologies was experiencing financial troubles in 2000 and 2001, one out of every three fluorescent lights was turned off in the facility. The same was done in the Naperville facilities for a while. The facility has a cricket field and nearby, features a station from which enthusiasts can control RC airplanes and helicopters.
FCPA case
According to its SEC filing, In April 2004 Lucent fired its president, COO, a marketing executive and a finance manager at its China operations for FCPA violations. These violations were uncovered through internal investigations triggered by the (unrelated) US DOJ and SEC probe into possible Lucent's FCPA violations in Saudi Arabia.
Logo
The Lucent logo was designed by Landor Associates, a prominent San Francisco-based branding consultancy. One source inside Lucent says that the logo is actually a Zen Buddhist symbol for "eternal truth", the Enso, turned 90 degrees and modified.
In the Dilbert comic strip, when Dogbert was asked to design a new company logo, he takes a piece of paper that his coffee cup was sitting on, and calls it the "Brown Ring of Quality". This may have been a parody of the Lucent logo.