LIVE FROM ALCATEL-LUCENT TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM 2014: The decision made by Alcatel-Lucent to focus its mobile efforts on LTE and small cells as part of its Shift Plan is reaping rewards, with the company able to point to contract wins from companies “not normally associated with us and wireless”, Dave Geary (pictured), president of the company’s Wireless unit, proclaimed this morning.

Acknowledging the tough choices that needed to be made as the company sharpened its focus on areas where it believed it could be profitable, the executive said that “by making those choices, we were de-emphasising everything else”.

When quizzed on what is driving the company’s success in the LTE space, Geary said that “it’s portfolio, but it’s a lot more than that”.

“It’s easy for everybody to talk about their portfolio, but the level of experience we have here I think is unique. And what we’ve done beyond portfolio from a professional services view, to help operators get to market fast, how we construct, integrate and optimise a particular network,” he continued.

“If you cannot compete on leadership, you are competing on price, which is not a great alternative,” Geary observed.

Noting that some observers had mooted that operators had already picked their LTE suppliers at the time of the Shift Plan, Geary simply argued that “that’s not the case”.

“Telenor is a good example. Here is an operator that was thought of as having a single RAN mindset, but Telenor has a lot of affiliates in a lot of countries, and they have a different strategy for going to market in each of those. And they see what we have to offer with our LTE solution, and we signed a frame agreement with them, and are now working with some of their affiliates,” the executive said.

Another customer highlighted was Vodafone Group, which has named Alcatel-Lucent as a supplier under its Project Spring network modernisation effort.

“We have never had wireless business with Vodafone. And this particular win will prove that our LTE solution can work in a multi-vendor environment with other network equipment vendors. We will prove that with one of the leading operators in the world, and we think that will have a lot of influence with others watching what they are doing in this area,” Geary said.

The executive cited research from Dell’Oro Group, which puts Alcatel-Lucent in a strong position for both FDD LTE and TD-LTE network contracts.

With regard to the latter, and noting that the company was starting from a “small number”, Geary said that contract wins in China and from Sprint in the US had put it “behind Huawei and ZTE, who are getting a disproportionate amount of business in China, which is positioning them where they are”.