It's a terrific deal, ... It adds legs to Lucent's top line growth.

The Finns are not by nature impulsive, ... Any final price tag for Lucent probably would be around $100 billion. Who out there can do a $100 billion deal these days?

It's a terrific move. It creates two businesses, each focused on their own area, and two investment vehicles that are more closely aligned with the kind of performance that investors are looking for.

Nortel doesn't have this particular piece, which gives Lucent a leg up.

We don't see any turnaround. We're not at a bottom, and it's going to take a couple [of] quarters, ... From that perspective, we think Cisco's guidance was right on.

My understanding of Nokia's management makes it unlikely that they would want to do this, ... Nokia has been doing well with organic growth and not doing large acquisitions. On the other hand, Lucent has a lot of assets that might be valuable, and some of those assets might match up well with Nokia. Lucent needs strong management, and Nokia definitely has that.

The Chinese market would be weak even if SARS had never happened. It's just the icing on the cake.

So it's relatively significant that they said flat-to-down.

It's a capability that Nortel doesn't have today. If the deal happens, Lucent will have more complete metropolitan solutions.