Alcatel is one European company, which has taken the American companies, including the new generation ones, head-on, while most others have chosen their niches and are marginal players. While, it is still strong in TDM switching, it has taken to new generation transport technologies like DWDM and broadband access in a big way. Also, the Newbridge acquisition gave it an edge in ATM and multiplexers.

In the traditional Indian market, Alcatel India, the company’s Indian subsidiary, got business from both the streams. While the company made Rs 91.57 crore from the traditional switching business, it did made an impressive Rs 58 crore from carrier data equipment.

Alcatel received an order worth Rs 80 crore from BSNL for supplying 4,00,000 lines of switching equipment. In new technology areas like DWDM, the company quoted the L1 price in a VSNL tender for its planned Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad-Delhi project, and is likely to get 70 percent of the order. The company also supplied microwave equipment to cellular service providers like Birla AT&T. Alcatel is also supplying ATM equipment to VSNL and SBI. The Newbridge division is also executing Phase II of the ASCON project for defense. The company also bagged RAS order for 20,000 ports from VSNL.

Alcatel India is focusing on the emerging high-end SDH and DWDM market. As this market opens up with long-distance network rollout, Alcatel plans to make a fortune there.