That didn’t last long – in October last year, Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc set up LightStream Corp as an 80%-owned joint venture with Tandem Computers Inc’s UB Networks to build Asynchronous Transfer Mode switches designed by Bolt Beranek. Yesterday, the Cambridge, Massachusetts company announced that it was selling the business to acquisitive Cisco Systems Inc, Menlo Park, for $120m cash. With the deal, Bolt Beranek gets an agreement from Cisco to promote its latest craze, which is providing Internet access services. Cisco agreed to help it market Internet access, design, implementation and management services. Under the terms of the pending transaction, Bolt Beranek will get about 83% of the net distribution and UB Networks gets the remainder. Bolt Beranek’s Barrnet and Nearnet services will be the majority provider of Internet access to Cisco, and it will become a provider of network management services to Cisco’s customers and will manage part of Cisco’s internal network. For Cisco, which already has Asynchronous Mode switches of its own, the deal takes a competitor out of the market and brings it some management software: will it take UB Networks off Tandem’s hands next?
