Friday, May 23, 2008

Sonus sails into Bahamas deal, Ahmed sails out of CEO role

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Sonus Networks Inc. of Westford has signed a new deal with the Bahamas Telecommunications Co. to provide the island nation with networking equipment as it modernizes and expands its communications network.

The deal comes on the heels of several additional new customer wins for Sonus, as well as the announcement this week that president and CEO Hassan Ahmed, who has led the company for 10 years, will step down as chief executive but remain as board chairman.

Financial terms of the Bahamas Telecommunications (BTC) deal were not provided, though Ahmed said the island’s incumbent carrier will use all Sonus equipment in the network.
“They are moving their network to a next-generation architecture and it is a major transformation of the infrastructure for the islands,” he said.

The deployment will include equipment in both the level four (transport) and level five (session) layers, and cover 18 of the nation’s islands.

According to Ahmed, the deal is the latest in a string of new customer wins for Sonus. Over the past month, the company has announced new deals with Canadian network provider Convergia Networks Inc. and India-based Tata Communications Ltd. Sonus had a previous presence in the Atlantic islands region, having rolled out product with both TeleBermuda International Ltd. and in the Caribbean network of Cable and Wireless International.

In the first quarter, Sonus reported revenue of $74 million, a $3 million increase over the same period last year. The company also reported a $566,000 net income, its second consecutive quarter of a net profit after posting a $27 million loss in the third quarter of 2007.

Earlier this week, Sonus announced that Ahmed would resign his position of CEO, passing the title on to former Motorola Inc. vice president and chief strategy officer Richard Nottenburg. Remaining as chairman, Ahmed will continue to be active in the company’s operations.

“As we’ve been focused on expanding for some time, we’ve been working on building up our (executive) horsepower,” he said. “This will also free me up to go out and build our customer base and work on the technology innovation side, which I really like.”