Lucent’s Mobile Business Picks Up

Just a few weeks ago, industry watchers were disappointed when Lucent Technologies missed its quarterly financial forecasts because of sluggish sales in its mobile unit.

The network equipment giant’s executives tried to minimize the fallout, stressing that the drop didn’t indicate a weak spot in its product line, but resulted from contract problems with two customers.

Since then, Lucent has landed several multi-million dollar deals to bolster its argument, including today’s $80 million gear and services order from Korean wireless carrier KTF.

Lucent will supply KTF with a third-generation network to carry voice and data traffic at up to 2.4 Megabits per second.

Specifically, it includes Lucent’s base stations, mobile switching centers and related software. Lucent’s services arm will handle installation, integration and quality assurance.

“KTF is recognized as one of the world’s leading providers of the most advanced mobile services, which makes this contract very significant for us,” said John Yang, president of Lucent Korean operations.

Based in Seoul, 6-year-old KTF is a subsidiary of Korea Telecom. It offers mobile Internet, m-commerce, multimedia, portal and telematics service to 10 million subscribers.

Other recent deals inked by Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent include a $1 billion deal to supply Sprint with advanced wireless networking equipment and services over several years and two smaller deals with Russian carriers.