Global vendor strategies - 09/06/06

Alcatel and Lucent have received regulatory approval from federal antitrust authorities for their merger, but still need various approvals in the United States and Europe, plus the green light from the shareholders of the two companies (planned in Sept.).

Intel may sell its telecom chip business (XScale processors for handsets and networks).

IBM plans to invest $6bn in over the next three years. IBM is already the largest western company in with 43,000 people there.

The telecom industry asks for increased federal funds for R&D purposes. It said that R&D could play a key factor to fuel telecom growth and leadership.

Huawei has reached a preliminary deal to buy smaller rival Harbour Networks, specialized in data network gear.

Motorola bought BenQ’s development center in Aalborg, .

Cisco bought Metreos, a provider of IP communication application development and management environments, for $28m, and Audium, a VoiceXML speech self-service application developer, for $20m.

Alcatel and LHS have extended their strategic partnership to combine Alcatel's Payment Suite 4.4 and LHS's billing and customer care system.