Lucent Technologies Inc, the telecommunications equipment maker to be spun off from AT&T Corp, has sealed an $800m deal to start the second phase of the Groupe Speciale Mobile digital cellular network in Saudi Arabia, its first big win as Lucent. The Saudi Ministry of Posts, Telegraph & Telephone authorized the new phase of the network, adding 300,000 lines to the existing plan for 200,000. AT&T won a $4,100m order in 1994 for 1.5m lines over seven years and open a 200,000-line digital network by this year (CI No 2,480). Lucent says that its win was hard-fought, and was not a foregone conclusion.
