A strong rumor that Telcordia has been acquired is sweeping the Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) sector Friday, though the identity of the buyer is yet to surface. It's well known that Telcordia's current owners, private equity firms Providence Equity Partners and Warburg Pincus, have been looking to sell the company they jointly bought for $1.35 billion in 2005. (See What's Telcordia Worth? and Telcordia – Wassup?)

Potential suitors are HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and even SAP AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: SAP), the German enterprise software giant that took a look at Telcordia some years ago. (See Telcordia's Takeover Shortlist .)

Earlier this year Light Reading analyzed Telcordia's potential prospects and worth, applying a potential price tag of $1.5 billion or even more.

One industry stalwart, speaking on background, suggests that any deal would be complex, as although Telcordia has plenty of individual OSS assets that might attract a lot of interested buyers, very few companies would be prepared to take on its legacy maintenance deals with the major U.S. carriers. Those maintenance contracts are still worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year, but are shrinking in value.

Another SPIT industry specialist, who requested anonymity, noted that while revenues from Telcordia's telecom software products are increasing, it's not growing at a fast enough rate to make up for the decline in the legacy maintenance deals. "Any company buying Telcordia will have a tough time making money from them," says the specialist.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading