Tellabs to Buy NetCore

On the heels of the Lucent/Nexabit announcement, carrier equipment vendor Tellabs (Lisle, IL) will gain its own "superswitch" by acquiring NetCore Systems Inc., a Wilmington, MA-based developer of carrier-class Internet protocol (IP) routing and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching equipment. The all-stock deal is valued at about $575 million. The agreement covers NetCore's 85 employees, including more than 60 engineers, at their Massachusetts headquarters, and Atlanta and Denver sales offices.

Tellabs designs, manufactures, and markets voice, data, and video transport and network access systems used by public telephone companies, long-distance carriers, and wireless service products. The acquisition of privately held NetCore will accelerate Tellabs' ability to help service providers build the "next-generation" public network—generally predicted to be a multiservice IP-based network that integrates data, voice, and video.

NetCore's Everest Integrated Switch combines IP routing and ATM switching into a single multi-layer device to reduce network cost and complexity and to help carriers provide Internet, virtual private network (VPN), and other business-class services on a single platform (see N+I 1999: NetCore' VISTA Delivers Business-Class VPNs). NetCore's technology will complement Tellabs' line of optical networking, managed access, and transport systems.