Alcatel plans to acquire Texas-based Spatial Wireless for $250 million in Alcatel American Depositary Shares. According to an Alcatel spokeswoman, the deal allows Alcatel to “leapfrog traditional mobile switching technologies with a commercially-available next-generation networks solution, designed and ready for IP multimedia subsystems.”
Spatial’s flagship product, Spatial Atrium, is a multistandard mobile softswitch that controls distributed media gateways and manages call/session control for voice and data services. It works in GSM/EDGE, 3G/UMTS and CDMA networks. It also enables the evolution to 3GPP Release 5 and Release 6 networks via software-only upgrades.
The product is in commercial use and in market trials, with major GSM and CDMA operators in the world, in particular in North America, China, and India with over one million ports deployed in 2004.
The solution complements Alcatel’s portfolio of next-generation IMS-ready products, addressing both fixed and mobile environments, and paves the way for future converged IMS architecture and multimedia services, according to Alcatel.
Spatial Wireless has 225 employees, has offices in the United States and India, and is headquartered in Richardson, Texas.
