That Britain’s erstwhile national champion will disappear into the bows of a larger entity is now widely accepted as inevitable since it was left out of the list of preferred suppliers for the 21st Century Network (21CN) project at BT Group Plc, Marconi’s traditional home patch and source of around 40% of its revenue. Huawei has been seen as the natural destination, not least because the Chinese vendor needs to up it presence in Europe, and having been appointed in two areas for 21CN, could probably use the British engineering presence Marconi would give it.
However, Ericsson is now thought to be on the trail, and may be even ahead of Huawei. But what would Marconi give it? Marconi failed to get its softswitch technology into the so-called i-nodes in which all the smarts of the 21CN are to reside, and indeed, Ericsson was the sole supplier named for that area (the only one of five areas in which BT named a single vendor rather than two). In other words, it doesn’t need Marconi’s softswitches.
Indeed, the only possible rationale for acquiring the UK vendor might be either to pick up some of its customer base and sell Ericsson products to them, or more compellingly, to stop Marconi from gaining a further foothold in Europe, provided Marconi comes cheaply enough.
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