Divisions Lucent was divided into several core groups: •
Network Solutions Group served landline/cellular telephone service providers by providing equipment and other solutions necessary to provide telephone service, including networking equipment. •
Lucent Worldwide Services (LWS) provided network services to telecom companies and business; clients included
AT&T Corporation and
Verizon. Divisions of LWS included the AT&T Customer Business Unit, known as ACBU; and another group for Southwestern Bell and other Bell companies. Both divisions were responsible for the installation of telecom equipment ranging from 2-pair copper to multi-wire fiber optics. Each group also installed the first true national cellular service with LTE speeds in the 1990s. •
Bell Labs was created in 1925 as the R&D firm of the
Bell System. It was an AT&T subsidiary set up as dual ownership by AT&T and
Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T.
Murray Hill facility The
Murray Hill facility in
New Providence, New Jersey was the global headquarters for Lucent Technologies. There was a
cricket field in the grounds. The
Murray Hill anechoic chamber, built in 1940, is the world's oldest wedge-based anechoic chamber. The interior room measures approximately high by wide by deep. The exterior concrete and brick walls are about thick to keep outside noise from entering the chamber. The chamber absorbs over 99.995% of the incident acoustic energy above 200 Hz. At one time the Murray Hill chamber was cited in the
Guinness Book of World Records as the world's quietest room.
Mount Olive facility The Mount Olive Product Realization Center (MTO-PRC) facility in
Mount Olive, New Jersey was part of the Wireless Networks Group business unit. The 252,000 square-feet building was constructed for
AT&T Corp. in 1994. The two leased buildings were located at the
International Trade Center (New Jersey) and one building was used for warehousing and the other used for wireless products manufacturing since 1995. An additionally built wireless products manufacturing, PRC, was located in
Piscataway, New Jersey also independently of AT&T creation. This
system integration plant was a manufacturing location with the business unit under one roof. This allowed, the development, design, business functions for manufacturing cellular phone parts From 1996 to 1999, PRC achieved and reduced with this new facility the following production metrics and lean manufacturing statistics: The facility introduced several self-managed work teams called PODs (Production On Demand) to assemble and test 50 Flexent Modcells daily. Expansion was evident with minicell lines for the South America market with cross-training technicians from Brazil on the product and the W-CDMA product for Japan's cellular carrier,
NTT DoCoMo. The architectural firm, Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates (KRJDA) designed five structures clad in energy-efficient, tinted, low-E glass. •
Westminster – built between 1997 and 2001, the
Westminster, Colorado building was a 480,000 ft² research and development facility for 1,350 employees. Its design is similar to the Lisle, Illinois building, with two four-story wings arranged with an entrance resembling a glass satellite dish. The building was an expansion to the existing Westminster building via pedestrian bridge. •
Naperville – in 2000, the 600,000 ft²
Naperville, Illinois five-story structure was completed for 2000 employees. It had a pedestrian bridge to the existing Indian Hill research and development building. In April 2023, the building was sold for $4.8 million by Nokia to a developer and the new ownership began demolition in August 2023 of those structures formerly called 'Indian Hill New' by Lucent and Alcatel-Lucent. •
Lisle – in 2001, the Network Software Center in
Lisle, Illinois was also completed in a similar design of a five-story three building with wings and two parking garages. This research and development building was a 600,000 ft² glass building for 2,000 employees. A pedestrian bridge over an existing lake linked it to the Network Software Center, built in the 1970s. •
Nuremberg – completed in 2002, the
Nuremberg, Germany "serpentine" five-story building was a 215,000 ft² expansion for two existing buildings, with the same aesthetic design as the United States projects. It included a customer center and training area. •
Agere Hanover – the last project was completed in 2002 in
Hanover Township, Allentown, Pennsylvania. The project was called the Agere Systems Expansion, which was a three-story administration, research and development building for 2,000 employees with 560,000 ft² of space. These buildings also included parking garages with about 2,000 parking spaces. The new structures were planned in 1998 by Lucent Technologies, before
Agere was incorporated on August 1, 2000, and Agere was spun off by Lucent Technologies on June 1, 2002. Built at a cost of $165 million, it became the Agere world headquarters in 2003 with consolidation of offices, research and development operations from former AT&T/Lucent Technologies locations at Allentown, Breinigsville, and Muhlenberg.
Leased locations To meet customer and business needs, further locations were built and leased for Lucent, rather than built as corporate assets. At September, 1997 Lucent reported that future non-cancelable lease payments totaled $1,037 million. •
Oklahoma City – in 1997, Adevco Corp. of Norcross, Ga., built the $8 million building for a Lucent customer center to employ 400 people in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Additionally, $4 million was added to the cost for components, communications systems, and technology of the 10 year contracted lease. The location was to provide support in orders, billing, and scheduled service for over 1.5 million customers. The 57,000-square-foot building was at 14400 Hertz Quail Springs Parkway and was the largest of four customer care locations. The other three centers being opened were in Tucson, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Parsippany, New Jersey. •
Altamonte Springs – in 1997, an international telecommunications training center was being constructed for potentially 20,000 yearly students learning the network and computerized phone switches. The
Altamonte Springs, Florida 100,000-square-foot center would have approximately 100 employees and consolidate the Northlake Boulevard Altamonte Springs training center with 20 employees. The building was located near Interstate 4 and Central Parkway, and leased from Emerson International. State and city officials gave Lucent a $348,600 four-year incentive packages to build the center at that city. The address was 240 East Central Parkway and considered as Centerpointe building. The training courses were hands-on, lab-based training of company products in data-networking, network-management, optical-networking, wireless, and wireline technologies in either international or domestic markets. The location also provided Navis Optical EMS (Element Management System) System User and Administration Training Using the GUI optical courses. The Customer Training and Information Products at Lucent Technologies facility continued to be known later as Alcatel-Lucent University upon the merger. •
Coppell – in 1998, consolidation of six office buildings, with seven business units, were planned for a new building in
Coppell, Texas. A business communications systems division and various local area administration, service, and sales employees were moved to the building. The 100,000-square-foot constructed building was a two-story office building at address, 1111 Freeport Parkway. Catellus Management Corporation was the developer on the project and Compass Management & Leasing was the lessor for Lucent. Lucent's real estate costs for Carrollton and Las Colinas buildings were eliminated with this new building constructed. Also, additional buildings at the following locations were moved as planned: 1841 Hutton in Valwood, 4006 Belt Line Road, 4100 Bryan, 5429 LBJ Freeway, 5501 LBJ Freeway, and 17950 Preston Road. In 1999, Townsend Capital purchased the building and Lucent was subletting the building to Avaya. •
Highlands Ranch – in 1999, Lucent moved its regional headquarters into the recently built Highlands Ranch Business Park at
Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
Shea Properties constructed the center and anticipated Lucents' decision by changing the name of Highlands Ranch Boulevard to Lucent Boulevard in 1997. The address was 8740-8744 Lucent Blvd and there was 600,000 square feet of office space to consolidate 3,200 employees from 13 sites near Denver. The 37-acre campus of three white precast buildings was built by Citadel National Construction Group in 21 months and Townsend Capital, LLC was the lessor for Lucent's project. The 8744 Lucent Blvd building was later used by
Avaya. •
Miramar – in 2000, Lucent announced the
Miramar, Florida, 240,000 square foot Caribbean & Latin American division (CALA) regional headquarters, to be built at a cost of $40 million. Opening was expected in summer 2001 at 2400 SW 145th Avenue, to consolidate 1,200 employees from 13 South Florida locations. Clayco built and developed the four-story, V-shaped building, including two wings for Rockefeller Group Development Corporation, the lessor of the building for Lucent's 15-year contract. About 2,500 square feet of lab space was planned for product development as part of this project. In 2002, Lucent's technology bubble burst and it relinquished 150,000 square feet of unused space. Within 24 months, the company recovered $20 million or more from subleasing the former space to new tenants. Alcatel-Lucent continued to use the building for CALA operations after the Lucent merger.
International locations •
Bangalore - in 1997, Bell Labs R&D was opened in
Bangalore, India and after four years of operation, Lucent announced the closure of Bell Labs in India. In August 2001, during the announcement, up to 500 employees were at Bangalore and Hyderabad locations. Lucent planned a $2 billion improvement in capital with restructuring on a global plan. •
Singapore – in 1998, an $8 million education and training center was planned for the Asia Pacific region. The
Singapore location would have 20,000 square feet of space with allocation of about 5,000 square feet of lab and equipment areas. The ten classrooms were for training customers on telecommunications services and products. •
Madrid – in 2000, the
microelectronics unit of Lucent Technologies located at
Tres Cantos,
Madrid,
Spain was ending production of integrated circuits under
Agere. The facility was installed by AT&T in 1987 and became Lucent in 1996. During Lucent's creation of Agere as a subsidiary, the facility became Agere and was later acquired by
BP Solar to manufacture photovoltaic panels. Lucent sold the facility in restructuring efforts to reduce staff and reduce the value of manufacturing assets. The location was called Lucent Technologies Madrid or Tres Cantos. Although the facility had a record of turnover production in November 2000 of 180 million euros and 18 million euros in income, it sold after June 2001 to BP due to not exceeding 25% production demand. •
Hyderabad - in 2001, Lucent announced the closure of Bell Labs in India at the Bangalore and
Hyderabad, India R&D locations. •
Gurgaon - in 2001, Lucent announced the Bangalore and Hyderabad Bell Labs locations of India to close. The
Gurgaon, India location was not in the August 2001 announcement and stated there were about 500 employees at the location supporting networking, marketing, and sales and not associated with the Bell Labs or R&D aspects. The Hilversum telecommunications operations were originally sold to AT&T from Philips in 1989. •
Bangalore - in 2004, Lucent announced a Bell Research Center in
Bangalore, India with development on data and networking management software. The scientists at Bell Labs Research would work on computer algorithms and switch architectures for wireless, optical, or data networking.
Domestic manufacturing locations Many of the following manufacturing locations were transferred to other subsidiaries during Lucent's existence, closed, or sold years later. These facilities were established by Western Electric before the 1983 Bell System break-up. AT&T operated and managed these locations from 1984 until 1996. After the AT&T spin-off of Lucent, the telecommunications equipment being manufactured at these locations became products of Lucent Technologies.
Awards • 1997, the
Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for work done by formerly AT&T Bell Labs and Microelectronics Group on the
Grand Alliance (HDTV) project for digital television. • 1998. the Adjunct Physics Director at Lucent Bell Labs,
Horst Stormer, received the
Nobel Prize in Physics with former AT&T Bell Labs scientists
Daniel C. Tsui and
Robert B. Laughlin. Their research work was done on
fractional quantum hall effect during their tenure at
AT&T Bell Labs. • 1998, Lucent received the INFORMS Prize, for its work in the companies operations research, presented by
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. • 1999. the Wireless Networks Group at the
Mount Olive, New Jersey Product Realization Center, received the 1999 New Jersey Governor's Gold Award for Performance Excellence. • 2000, the
Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing was awarded at the Mount Olive Product Realization Center. ==References==