PARIS (AFX) - Alcatel-Lucent has signed an agreement with Nortel that gives it first option to buy the Canadian group's GSM activities if it decides to put them up for sale, French daily Les Echos reported, citing a financial document obtained by the paper.
According to the document, if Nortel were to sell its GSM business, Alcatel-Lucent would have 30 days to make an offer before Nortel opened it up to other potential bidders.
The agreement gives Alcatel-Lucent the option to acquire a licence to use Nortel's GSM and/or long-term evolution technologies, in return for licensing fees of 50 mln usd for the GSM technology and 15 mln for the LTE technology.
The option for the GSM technology runs until 2008 and the option for the LTE technology until 2010, Les Echos said.
At the start of the year, Alcatel-Lucent denied rumours it was to exchange its PABX business telephony centres for Nortel's GSM activities, the paper said.
However, Mary Chan, chairman of Alcatel-Lucent's mobile business, said at last month's 3GSM Salon when asked to comment on discussions with Nortel 'all options are open but we are comfortable with our GSM portfolio, which is highly competitive'.
In September last year, Alcatel acquired Nortel's universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) radio access business for a total of 320 mln usd, a move that has contributed to the planned 12,500 redundancies at Alcatel-Lucent.
Referring to the job cuts, Les Echos cited union sources as saying Nortel has agreed to help finance the plan if it affects more than 150 employees in the UMTS business sold to Alcatel. vicky.buffery@thomson.com vb/ms1 COPYRIGHT Copyright AFX News Limited 2007. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News. AFX News and AFX Financial News Logo are registered trademarks of AFX News Limited
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