Will more big deals follow as telecoms-equipment firms consolidate? This truly is a defining moment for our industry," said Patricia Russo, the boss of Lucent Technologies, a big American telecoms-equipment firm, as she and Serge Tchuruk, her opposite number at Alcatel, a French equipment-maker, announced a merger on April 2nd. Corporate chieftains love "defining moments". But it is true that combining Alcatel and Lucent will create one of the world's largest suppliers of networking gear by revenue, rivalling Cisco (see chart). A deal on this scale has been expected for some time, thanks to the flurry of mergers among their customers, particularly network operators in America and Europe. Some see it as the beginning of a long-awaited consolidation of equipment-mak-ers-which are competing for a dwindling pool of customers as the operators team up—with many observers predicting a "domino effect" of further huge mergers.
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