Dutch cable giant acquires intellectual property rights

01.08.2005
Von Russell Bennett

ITT Industries has sold the intellectual property rights from ITT Network Systems and Services (NS&S) to Belgium-based cabling systems giant, Nexans.

Ray Harling, MD of South African ITT representative, Inqe Telecommunications Technologies, believes that this move is likely to increase the delivery speed of cabling components from this vendor to the SA market, while opening up new solution sets available in Nexans extensive portfolio.

A new business unit, which will fall under the Nexans Cabling Solutions banner, has been established to specialize in the development of products and services under the LANsense brand name. Tony Rossiter of ITTNS&S has been appointed to manage this unit, which has been named Nexans Intelligent Enterprise Solutions (IES) and will be headquartered in the U.K.

The LANsense brand will be positioned as the flagship solution for the intelligent infrastructure management (IIM) market, and is expected to benefit from the strong existing relationship between Nexans and global IIM specialist, the iTRACS Corporation.

IES will supply a full range of LANsense solutions alongside the familiar LANConnect UTP, ISCS FTP and GIGAPath fibre solutions familiar to ITT NS&S customers, along with existing Nexans LANmark solutions and services.

Mark Rogers, MD Nexans Cabling Systems, comments: ?The creation of Nexans IES to develop the LANsense range of intelligent solutions, wireless products and powered LAN devices complements our existing LANmark solutions.?

The technology which SA customers are accustomed to acquiring from ITT NS&S via Inqe will remain available under the new structure, as well as the full range of Nexans solutions and future developments to the solution set. A Cat 7 solution has already been made available for those customers who might require it.

Says Rossiter: ?The new unit will not only enhance the range of Nexans products and solutions, but will also significantly increase Nexans? presence and capabilities in the UK and in global markets.?

?For us at Inqe and our customers in SA, nothing really changes, apart from the name of the solution. It is the same product which our customers are used to, and is still available through the same channel, it is just called something else. The products will now be shipped directly from a new warehouse in Brussels itself, the major shipping hub in Europe, so shipping times should be slightly faster, while everything else remains business as usual,? comments Harling.

Certification of LANsense installations will continue to follow the same channels as before, as, although a concerted effort is being made to accelerate this process, test results still need to be forwarded to NIES for certification, for which no local office exists.

As a result, the certification process suffers from something of a bottleneck, as SA results fall into the global queue and must simply await validation.