Lucent Technologies agreed to acquire Telica for approximately $295 million in stock and options (92.7 million shares), plus additional employee-related cash payments, for its softswitch platform.
Janet Davidson, president of Lucent Technologies' Integrated Network Solutions (INS) business, said the acquisition would strengthen the company's "Accelerate" VoIP portfolio and enable it to address a much wider range of network build-outs. She said Telica's 2500 port media gateway and signaling gateway complements Lucent's own softswitch solutions.
Telica's product portfolio includes the Plexus 9000 Media Gateway, PLUS Signaling Gateway, and PLUS Media Gateway Controller. Its Plexus Unified Service Architecture (PLUS) supports a mix of legacy TDM, packet, Class 4, Class 5, wireline and wireless services. The second generation platform, which was introduced in September 2003, provides greater scalability by means of new Compute Modules for its Media Gateway Controller. Each new module delivers processing power that is equivalent to an entire first-generation softswitch platform. A single PLUS second-generation softswitch now supports up to 7.5 million calls per hour, the equivalent of five to 10 legacy switches. The PLUS architecture also is designed to interoperate with other softswitches provided by other suppliers via either SIP-T or BICC protocols.
To date, Telica has deployed more than 3 million ports and is supporting about 4 billion minutes of use per month on its PLUS systems. The company claims more than 60 customers. Telica had revenues of about $19 million in 2003.
Following the acquisition, Lucent's Accelerate VoIP portfolio will include the following elements.
- Application layer: Broadsoft feature server, MiLife, PacketIN, EBS Communications Manager
- Session Control Layer: IMS Lucent softswitch, SDHLR
- Media and Endpoint Layer: 5E-XC, iMerge, Intelligent Media Gateway, Telica Gateway Controller, Cisco Media Gateway, Universal Gateways, PSAX Multiservice Gateway, Telica Media Gateway, Telica Signalling Gateway
- Telica has about 250 employees worldwide and is based in Marlboro, Massachusetts. The company was co-founded in 1998 by John St. Amand.
- In April 2004, Telica enhanced its Plexus 9000 and PLUS second generation softswitch family with a new Advanced Multi-key Routing application that allows service providers to route calls based on hundreds of parameters, including least-cost routing, time-of-day routing, class/quality of service routing, switch ID routing, domestic and international routing, and other factors. Telica said carriers could use this capability to define multiple routing plans that support individualized handling of each customer's traffic.
- In February 2004, Lucent Technologies and Cisco Systems announced a joint VoIP solution targeted at mobile service providers. The solution, which combines the Lucent Softswitch (LSS) and Cisco MGX 8000 Series Media Gateways, is part of Lucent's recently announced Accelerate VoIP portfolio.
- In January 2002, Telica announced $60 million in third round funding for its softswitch-based voice and data infrastructure products, bringing total funding at the time to over $120 million. Highland Capital Partners and Oak Investment Partners co-led the financing. Other investors included venture firms, service providers and strategic corporate investors.
- In February 2002, Telica announced a five-year OEM deal with Alcatel.
