GENBAND Signs Deal to Spin Out Taqua Business

Taqua Inc. has gone full circle.

The company was founded in 1998. It was later acquired by Tekelec. Just this spring GENBAND bought the Taqua assets as part of a package deal with Tekelec. And today GENBAND announced it has closed a deal to spin off the Taqua part of its recent acquisitions from Tekelec.

Financial terms of the arrangement with the leadership team responsible for managing the T7000 product family at GENBAND were not disclosed. But something along these lines was expected for Taqua.

In discussing the Tekelec deal with xchange in March, GENBAND President and CEO Charlie Vogt indicated that the Taqua softswitch assets of Tekelec were not a key motivator of the move and mentioned that GENBAND would reveal its plans for Tekelec’s softswitch assets following the close of the deal, which was announced in March. During that conversation Vogt, the former president and CEO of Taqua (which was acquired by Tekelec in March 2004), mentioned that Tekelec’s switching business lost $70 million last year.

Nonetheless, in a press announcement today about the Taqua spinoff, Vogt was quoted as saying: “We are confident that the Taqua management team and its employees have the sufficiuent depth to effectively operate and grow the Taqua business, which has been our primary focus for this transaction.”

The T7000 (Taqua 7000 Switching System) is a Class 4/5 switch replacement that’s used for a variety of applications in more than 250 deployments at incumbent and competitive carriers in North America.

Tekelec, which still exists as a signaling company, over the years was on an acquisition spree that saw it purchase Taqua as well as Santera Systems Inc. and VocalData. It was those three properties that GENBAND got as part of its March deal with Tekelec. But it was the application- and gateway-related gear from Santera and VocalData that GENBAND wanted to get its hands on.

In announcing the Tekelec deal this spring, Vogt said GENBAND already had applications solutions focused primarily on unified communications and things like prepaid services, but that the VocalData assets of the Tekelec switching business added to that by bringing in a more hosted IP-type solution. And while GENBAND had small and mid-sized universal gateways prior to its acquisitions from Tekelec, the Santera products allowed it to add a high-density trunking gateway and a wireless trunking gateway to its portfolio.

GENBAND www.genband.com
Taqua Inc. www.taqua.com
Tekelec www.Tekelec.com

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