Sunday, June 17, 2007

ECI Takeover in the Works

Israel based ECI Telecom is holding talks with an investment firm about tale of the company's stock for $1.2 billion. Major shareholders in ECI apparently would like to divest their holdings. These discussions apparently have not reached a definitive stage.

ECI has done very well in the access business and particularly in supporting IPTV services. Nearly all of the IPTV subscribers in France Telecom are served by ECI systems. About 40 percent of the VDSL lines being installed by Deutsche Telekom are served by ECI systems.

The broadband market is reaching a point of saturation and it is likely that telco spending on broadband equipment is starting to decline. This will make a very competitive market even more so. This puts a smaller company competing with Huawei and giants such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens in a very tough position. It is not surprising that its current investors would like to find a way out.

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