Last summer Alcatel CEO Serge Tchuruk shrugged off the suggestion that large-scale consolidation among big telecom equipment vendors was long overdue. The industry had been waiting for it basically since the bubble burst, drumming its collective fingers as the Lucent and Nortel crowd stumbled past one another. To hear Tchuruk describe it, major vendor M&A was like a skunk hunt: Everyone's after the same prize, but no one wants to go first.

“Why should I clean up the industry at my expense and leave the benefit for the other guys?” he asked, arguing for creative alternatives to M&A. When asked a similar question around the same time, Cisco CEO John Chambers seemed to concur, adding, “We're extremely unlikely to ever do a large acquisition. In my view, most all of them fail.” Back then, big vendor CEOs like Nortel's Bill Owens were singing the praises of partnerships as a convenient way to avoid the pain of bi-corporate integration. Lucent had become a prolific seller of other companies' gear. And Alcatel helped redefine the role of equipment vendors in this era with its “key supplier” contract for Project Lightspeed. (This year, Avici Networks and ECI Telecom both complained that their Nortel partnerships dampened their earnings, a reminder that partnerships can be problematic, too.)

Anyway, either Tchuruk changed his mind or he deliberately scheduled the gargantuan Lucent/Alcatel merger so close to his own retirement (which comes this year) that he would be out on the golf course by the time the merde hit the fan. In any case, other vendors are sure to follow, big and small. (Nortel will probably be late, as it cleans up its own mess. It will be interesting to see if Chambers eats his words and acquires Motorola, for example.)

The companies left standing when the dust settles will each boast a comprehensive portfolio of network gear, from wireless to optical to access to IP to Ethernet. And the era of partners and “not invented here” gear may be another casualty of the fray.