On June 14, 2011, Ericsson announced that it would buy the American telecommunication research and development company Telcordia for £1.15 billion. The acquisition officially closed on January 12, 2012, with the company folded into Ericsson’s Multimedia unit, now called Support Solutions.
One of the reasons Ericsson bought Telcordia is that Ericsson sees Operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) as key growth areas and wants to strengthen its position within OSS/BSS transformation and mobile broadband support systems.
In a press release, Hans Vestberg, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ericsson, said: "The importance of operations and business support systems will continue to grow as more and more devices are connected, services become mobile and new business models for mobile broadband are introduced. In this context, Telcordia brings very skilled people and knowledge, a large business in North America and other markets, as well as a good multi vendor product portfolio."
On June 4 2012, Telcordia and its portfolio of products were officially rebranded as Ericsson. As part of the deal, the purchase resulted in the creation of Applied Communications Sciences, formerly the research and consulting arm of Telcordia. In October, 2012, Applied Communication Sciences relocated its headquarters toBasking Bridge, New Jersey, where it occupies the former AT&T Wireless headquarters building.
In February 2013, Ericsson announced that its interconnection business, known previously as Telcordia Interconnection Solutions, had been renamed iconectiv. Its offers cover such areas as device theft and counterfeit prevention, number portability, information services, numbering and addressing, mobile messaging and spectrum management.
Telcordia was created in October 1983, as Central Services Organization as part of the 1982 Modification of Final Judgement that broke up theBell System. Later, it received the name Bell Communications Research, Inc. Bellcore was a consortium established by the Regional Bell Operating Companies upon their separation from AT&T. In 1996, the company was provisionally acquired by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). The sale was closed in 1997. The company no longer had any ownership connection with the Bell regional companies, and the name was officially changed to Telcordia Technologies, Inc.
Telcordia was a chief architect of the telecommunications system in the U.S. Its software products were designed to solve communications problems, support complex operations missions and system interoperability issues. Telcordia developed many of the technologies that have revolutionized communications, including the ability to make three-way and toll-free phone call.
Another invention from Telcordia is the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) standard that is today used globally to send multimedia e-mail attachments, including photos, documents and audio files. The company also wrote proposed generic requirements (GRs) for telecommunications industry hardware and offers consulting and testing to these GRs. Over the years, Telcordia research generated more than 1800 patents.
