Swedish Telecom vendor Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) announced today its intention to acquire privately-held Telcordia.
The all cash transaction is valued at $1.15 billion and will see 2,600 Telcordia employees join Ericsson. Ericsson expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter of 2011.
The deal marks a return of Telcordia’s assets to the public markets after being taken private in 2004. Warburg Pincus Equity Partners and Providence Equity Partners took Telecordia private in a deal worth $1.3 billion.
Telcordia develops mobile, broadband and enterprise communications software and services and is seen by Ericsson as offering complementary services.
“The importance of operations and business support systems will continue to grow as more and more devices are connected, services become mobile and new business models for mobile broadband are introduced,” Hans Vestberg, President and CEO, Ericsson said in a statement. “In this context, Telcordia brings very skilled people and knowledge, a large business in North America and other markets, as well as a good multi vendor product portfolio.”
Telcordia’s roots go back to AT&T labs which the company was part of until it was sold to SAIC in 1997, where it operated as a subsidiary.
Telcordia isn’t the only former AT&T technology set to return into the public markets this year. Avaya announced last week that its’ private owners were taking the company public again.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.