Ericsson bids $1.15B to buy Telcordia

Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications vendor which occasionally steps into the cable space, and Telcordia Technologies, the New Jersey-based telecom equipment player which generally avoids cable, will become one if Ericsson's $1.15 billion takeover bid is approved.

Telcordia has been on the market for a while, so it appears that its owners, Providence Equity Partners and Warburg Pincus, are okay with the deal. Those two private equity investors bought Telcordia from SAIC in 2004 for $1.35 billion in cash--supposedly a good price at that point in the telecom slump.

For Telcordia, it will be another fork in a path that began when the company was called Bellcore and it provided software to the seven RBOCs or "Baby Bells" as they were then known. As with every company still in business, Telcordia has been transitioning its product lines from legacy billing and customer care provisioning to those focused on advanced IP platforms.

For more:
- the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) has this story

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