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Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational
telecommunications equipment Telecommunications equipment (also telecoms equipment or communications equipment) are hardware which are used for the purposes of telecommunications. Since the 1990s the boundary between telecoms equipment and IT hardware has become blurred as a ...
company headquartered in Murray Hill,
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the
divestiture In finance and economics, divestment or divestiture is the reduction of some kind of asset for financial, ethical, or political objectives or sale of an existing business by a firm. A divestment is the opposite of an investment. Divestiture is a ...
of the former AT&T Technologies business unit of
AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
, which included Western Electric and
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
. Lucent was merged with Alcatel SA of France on December 1, 2006, forming
Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a s ...
. Alcatel-Lucent was absorbed by
Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
in January 2016.


Name

Lucent means "light-bearing" in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
. The name was applied for in 1996 at the time of the split from AT&T. The name was widely criticised, as the logo was to be, both internally and externally. Corporate communications and business cards included the
strapline Advertising slogans are short phrases used in advertising campaigns to generate publicity and unify a company's marketing strategy. The phrases may be used to attract attention to a distinctive product feature or reinforce a company's brand. Etym ...
'Bell Labs Innovations' in a bid to retain the prestige of the internationally famous research lab, within a new business under an as-yet unknown name. This same linguistic root also gives
Lucifer Lucifer is one of various figures in folklore associated with the planet Venus. The entity's name was subsequently absorbed into Christianity as a name for the devil. Modern scholarship generally translates the term in the relevant Bible passa ...
, "the light bearer" (from lux, 'light', and ferre, 'to bear'), who is also a character in Dante's epic poem ''Inferno''. Shortly after the Lucent renaming in 1996, Lucent's Plan 9 project released a development of their work as the
Inferno Inferno may refer to: * Hell, an afterlife place of suffering * Conflagration, a large uncontrolled fire Film * ''L'Inferno'', a 1911 Italian film * Inferno (1953 film), ''Inferno'' (1953 film), a film noir by Roy Ward Baker * Inferno (1973 fi ...
OS in 1997. This extended the 'Lucifer' and Dante references as a series of
pun A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
ning names for the components of Inferno - Dis,
Limbo In Catholic theology, Limbo (Latin '' limbus'', edge or boundary, referring to the edge of Hell) is the afterlife condition of those who die in original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the Damned. Medieval theologians of Western Euro ...
, Charon and Styx (9P Protocol). When the rights to Inferno were sold in 2000, the company Vita Nuova Holdings was formed to represent them. This continues the Dante theme, although moving away from his ''
Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature ...
'' to the poem '' La Vita Nuova''.


Logo

The Lucent
logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordma ...
, the Innovation Ring, was designed by
Landor Associates Landor is a brand consulting firm founded in 1941 by Walter Landor, who pioneered some research, design, and consulting methods that the branding industry still uses. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company maintains 26 offices in 20 count ...
, a prominent San Francisco-based branding consultancy. One source inside Lucent says that the logo is a
Zen Buddhist Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
symbol for "eternal truth", the Enso, turned 90 degrees and modified. Another source says it represents the mythic
ouroboros The ouroboros or uroboros () is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The ouroboros entered Western tradition via ancient Egyptian iconography and the Greek magical tradition. It was adopted as a symbol in Gnost ...
, a
snake Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...
holding its tail in its mouth. Lucent's logo also has been said to represent constant re-creating and re-thinking.
Carly Fiorina Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina ('' née'' Sneed; born September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and politician, known primarily for her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP). As chief executive officer of HP from 1999 to 2005, Fiorina wa ...
picked the logo because her mother was a painter and she rejected the sterile geometric logos of most high tech companies. After the logo was compared in the media to the ring a coffee mug leaves on paper, a ''
Dilbert ''Dilbert'' is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989. It is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert as the title characte ...
'' comic strip showed
Dogbert This is a list of characters that have appeared in Scott Adams' ''Dilbert'' comic strip. Primary characters Dilbert The main character in the strip, Dilbert is a stereotypical technically-minded single male. Prior to October 2014, he was us ...
as an overpaid consultant designing 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". A telecommunication commentator referred to the logo as "a big red zero" and predicted financial losses.


History

One of the primary reasons
AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
chose to spin off its equipment manufacturing business was to permit it to profit from sales to competing
telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
s providers; these customers had previously shown reluctance to purchase from a direct competitor.
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
brought prestige to the new company, as well as the revenue from thousands of patents. At the time of its spinoff, Lucent was placed under the leadership of
Henry Schacht Henry Schacht (born October 16, 1934) is an American businessman, a former chairman and chief executive officer of Cummins Diesel (1973–1994), and later CEO of Lucent Technologies. Previously he was on the boards of CBS, Chase Manhattan, and ...
, who was brought in to oversee its transition from an arm of AT&T into an independent corporation. Richard McGinn, who was serving as president and COO, succeeded Schacht as CEO in 1997 while Schacht remained chairman of the board. Lucent became a "darling" stock of the investment community in the late 1990s, and its split-adjusted spinoff price of $7.56/share rose to a high of $84. Its market capitalization reached a high of $258 billion, and it was at the time the most widely held company with 5.3 million shareholders. In 1997, Lucent acquired
Milpitas Milpitas (Spanish for "little milpas") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in Silicon Valley. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 80,273. The city's origins lie in Rancho Milpitas, granted to Californio ranchero José Marí ...
-based
voicemail A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to ind ...
market leader
Octel Communications Corporation Octel may refer to: * Octel Corporation, former name of American specialty chemical company Innospec * Octel Communications, voicemail company acquired by Lucent {{disambiguation ...
for $2.1 billion, a move which immediately rendered the Business Systems Group profitable. By 1999 Lucent stock continued to soar and in that year Lucent acquired
Ascend Communications Ascend Communications was an Alameda, California-based manufacturer of communications equipment that was later purchased by Lucent Technologies in 1999. Ascend Communications was founded in 1988 and taken public in 1994. Initial investors includ ...
, an
Alameda, California Alameda ( ; ; Spanish for "Avenue (landscape), tree-lined path") is a city in Alameda County, California, located in the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), East Bay region of the Bay Area. The city is primarily located on Alameda (island), Alam ...
–based manufacturer of communications equipment for US$24 billion. Lucent held discussions to acquire
Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security products, ...
but decided instead to build its own routers. In 1997, Lucent acquired Livingston Enterprises Inc. for $650 million in stock. Livingston was known most for the creation of the
RADIUS In classical geometry, a radius ( : radii) of a circle or sphere is any of the line segments from its center to its perimeter, and in more modern usage, it is also their length. The name comes from the latin ''radius'', meaning ray but also the ...
protocol and their PortMaster product that was used widely by
dial-up internet Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telep ...
service providers. In 1995,
Carly Fiorina Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina ('' née'' Sneed; born September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and politician, known primarily for her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP). As chief executive officer of HP from 1999 to 2005, Fiorina wa ...
led corporate operations. In that capacity, she reported to Lucent chief executive Henry B. Schacht. She played a key role in planning and implementing the 1996
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
of a successful stock and company launch strategy. Under her guidance, the spin-off raised 3 billion. Later in 1996, Fiorina was appointed president of Lucent's consumer products sector, reporting to president and chief operating officer Rich McGinn. In 1997, she was named group president for Lucent's 19 billion global service-provider business, overseeing marketing and sales for the company's largest customer segment. That year, Fiorina chaired a 2.5 billion joint venture between Lucent's consumer communications and
Royal Philips Electronics Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...
, under the name Philips Consumer Communications (PCC). The focus of the venture was to bring both companies to the top three in technology, distribution, and brand recognition. Ultimately, the project struggled and dissolved a year later after it garnered only 2% market share in mobile phones. Losses were at $500 million on sales of $2.5 billion. As a result of the failed joint venture, Philips announced the closure of one-quarter of the company's 230 factories worldwide, and Lucent closed down its wireless handset portion of the venture. Analysts suggested that the joint venture's failure was due to a combination of technology and management problems. Upon the end of the joint venture, PCC sent 5,000 employees back to Philips, many of which were laid off, and 8,400 employees back to Lucent. Under Fiorina, the company added 22,000 jobs and revenues seemed to grow from 19 billion to 38 billion. However, the real cause of Lucent spurring sales under Fiorina was by lending money to their own customers. According to ''Fortune'' magazine, "In a neat bit of accounting magic, money from the loans began to appear on Lucent’s income statement as new revenue while the dicey debt got stashed on its balance sheet as an allegedly solid asset". Lucent's stock price grew 10-fold. At the start of 2000, Lucent's "private bubble" burst, while competitors like
Nortel Networks Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly Northern Telecom Limited, was a Canadian multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in Montreal, Queb ...
and
Alcatel Alcatel may refer to: * Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia * Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...
were still going strong; it would be many months before the rest of the telecom industry bubble collapsed. Previously Lucent had 14 straight quarters where it exceeded analysts' expectations, leading to high expectations for the 15th quarter, ending Dec. 31, 1999. On January 6, 2000, Lucent made the first of a string of announcements that it had missed its quarterly estimates, as CEO Rich McGinn grimly announced that Lucent had run into special problems during that quarter—including disruptions in its optical networking business—and reported flat revenues and a big drop in profits. That caused the stock to plunge by 28%, shaving $64 billion off of the company's market capitalization. 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. It was said that "Rich McGinn couldn't accept Lucent's fall from its early triumphs." He described himself once as imposing "audacious" goals on his managers, believing the stretch for performance would produce dream results. Henry Schacht defended the corporate culture that McGinn created and also noted that McGinn did not sell any Lucent shares while serving as CEO. In November 2000, the company disclosed to the
Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...
that it had a $125 million accounting error for the third quarter of 2000, and by December 2000 it reported it had overstated its revenues for its latest quarter by nearly $700 million. Although no wrongdoing was found on his part, McGinn was forced to resign as CEO and he was replaced by Schacht on an interim basis. Subsequently, its CFO, Deborah Hopkins, left the company in May 2001 with Lucent's stock at $9.06 whereas at the time she was hired it was at $46.82. In 2001 there were merger discussions between Lucent and
Alcatel Alcatel may refer to: * Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia * Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...
, which would have seen Lucent acquired at its current market price without a premium; the newly combined entity would have been headquartered in Murray Hill. However, these negotiations collapsed when Schacht insisted on an equal 7–7 split of the merged company's board of directors, while Alcatel chief executive officer
Serge Tchuruk Serge Tchurukdichian (born 13 November 1937), known as Serge Tchuruk, is a French businessman of Armenian descent. He was the chief executive officer and chairman of Alcatel (a global telecommunications company) until the end of November 2006 ...
wanted 8 of the 14 board seats for Alcatel due to it being in a stronger position. The failure of the merger talks caused Lucent's share price to collapse, and by October 2002 the stock price had bottomed at 55 cents per share.
Patricia Russo Patricia F. Russo (born June 12, 1952, in Trenton, New Jersey) is an American businessperson. Russo is most widely known for having served as chief executive officer of Lucent Technologies, and its successor, Alcatel-Lucent, a large communication ...
, formerly Lucent's EVP of the Corporate Office who then left for
Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
to serve as COO, was named permanent chairman and CEO of Lucent in 2002, succeeding Schacht who remained on the board of directors. In April 2000, Lucent sold its Consumer Products unit to VTech. In October 2000, Lucent spun off its Business Systems arm into
Avaya Avaya Holdings Corp., often shortened to Avaya (), is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, that provides cloud communications and workstream collaboration services. The company's platform includ ...
, Inc., and in June 2002, it spun off its microelectronics division into
Agere Systems Agere Systems, Inc. was an integrated circuit components company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Spun out of Lucent Technologies in 2002, Agere was merged into LSI Corporation in 2007. LSI was in turn acquired by Avago Technologies in 2014. In ...
. The spinoffs of enterprise networking and wireless, the industry's key growth businesses from 2003 onward, meant that Lucent no longer had the capacity to serve this market. Lucent was reduced to 30,500 employees, down from about 165,000 employees at its zenith. The layoffs of so many experienced employees meant that the company was in a weakened position and unable to reestablish itself when the market recovered in 2003. By early 2003, Lucent's market value was $15.6 billion (which includes $6.8 billion of current value for two companies that Lucent had recently spun off, Avaya and Agere Systems), making the shares worth around $2.13, a far cry from its dotcom bubble peak of around $84, when Lucent was worth $258 billion. Lucent continued to be active in the areas of
telephone switching telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syst ...
, optical, data and wireless networking. On April 2, 2006, Lucent announced a merger agreement with
Alcatel Alcatel may refer to: * Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia * Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...
, which was 1.5 times the size of Lucent.
Serge Tchuruk Serge Tchurukdichian (born 13 November 1937), known as Serge Tchuruk, is a French businessman of Armenian descent. He was the chief executive officer and chairman of Alcatel (a global telecommunications company) until the end of November 2006 ...
became non-executive chairman, and Russo served as CEO of the newly merged company,
Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a s ...
, until they were both forced to resign at the end of 2008. The merger failed to produce the expected synergies, and there were significant write-downs of Lucent's assets that Alcatel purchased.


Operations


Divisions

Lucent was divided into several core groups: * Network Solutions Group served landline/cellular telephone service providers by providing equipment and other solutions necessary to provide telephone service, including networking equipment. * Lucent Worldwide Services (LWS) provided network services to telecom companies and business; clients included
AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
and
Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
. Divisions of LWS included the AT&T Customer Business Unit, known as ACBU; and another group for Southwestern Bell and other Bell companies. Both divisions were responsible for the installation of telecom equipment ranging from 2-pair copper to multi-wire fiber optics. Each group also installed the first true national cellular service with LTE speeds in the 1990s. *
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
was created in 1925 as the R&D firm of the
Bell System The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundr ...
. It was an AT&T subsidiary set up as dual ownership by AT&T and Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T.


Murray Hill facility

The Murray Hill
anechoic chamber An anechoic chamber (''an-echoic'' meaning "non-reflective") is a room designed to stop reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves. They are also often isolated from energy entering from their surroundings. This combination means t ...
, built in 1940, is the world's oldest wedge-based anechoic chamber. The interior room measures approximately high by wide by deep. The exterior concrete and brick walls are about 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 ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
as the world's quietest room. It is possible to hear the sounds of skeletal joints and heart beats very prominently. The Murray Hill facility was the global headquarters for Lucent Technologies. The Murray Hill facility also has the largest
copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
-
roof A roof ( : roofs or rooves) is the top covering of a building, including all materials and constructions necessary to support it on the walls of the building or on uprights, providing protection against rain, snow, sunlight, extremes of temper ...
in the world. When Lucent Technologies was experiencing financial troubles in 2000 and 2001, one out of every three
fluorescent Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore a lower photon energy, tha ...
lights was turned off in the facility. The same was done in the
Naperville Naperville ( ) is a city in DuPage County, Illinois, DuPage and Will County, Illinois, Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is in the Chicago metro area, west of the city. Naperville was founded in 1831 by Joseph Naper. The city was ...
,
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
, and
Allentown, Pennsylvania Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The city has a population of 125,845 as of the 2020 United ...
, facilities for a while. The facility had a
cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
field and featured a nearby station from which enthusiasts could control RC airplanes and helicopters.


References


Further reading

* * Lazonick, William, and Edward March (2011) "The Rise and Demise of Lucent Technologies," ''Journal of Strategic Management Education'', vol. 7, no. 4.
online
{{Authority control Telecommunications companies established in 1996 American companies established in 1996 Telecommunications companies disestablished in 2006 Defunct companies based in New Jersey Defunct telecommunications companies of the United States Telecommunications equipment vendors