Data networking giant Cisco Systems Inc has apparently made the final move with its $160m acquisition of LightSpeed International Inc (CI No 3,317) that will enable it to become a full telecommunications equipment supplier, to directly rival companies such as LM Ericsson AB, Northern Telecom Ltd and Lucent technologies Inc. LightSpeed develops the transpath messaging and call switching software, which enables hardware to switch data and voice calls over different types of voice and data networks. The software is going to give Cisco the opportunity to add support of the phone network into their data equipment, claims Dataquest analyst Brett Azuma.
