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If I'm not mistaken they had a telecom infrastructure division at one point.

cestith 28d ago
Siemens started as a communications company. The first invention was a type of telegraph. Siemens had a division called Siemens Communications Systems. They split that into Siemens Communications Systems (public networks) and Siemens Information Systems (PBX systems and such) in the mid 1980s. The company did a reorg in the late 1990s into four divisions. Those were rail, industrial, power generation, and information & communications systems. That was again called Siemens Communications Systems. SCS was rebranded to Unify in 2013. Unify was sold to Atos in 2016. Mitel bought it from Atos around 2023. Unify is currently still a subsidiary of Mitel. Parts of the communications division had been split off and went through separate M&A activity previously. The DCO and EWSD were notable digital central office phone switches. The EWSD ended up at Nokia through some M&A activity. The EWSD was commissioned into phone company offices right up until 2017. When I was in the dial-up ISP world and had dozens of contacts within phone companies, the joke backronym for it was Europe’s Worst Switching Device. It was actually pretty reliable if the software was kept up to date, but there are hilarious stories about early models and unpatched installations. I have one of those stories in personal memory. Fun facts: EWSD was a joint project in some way with Bosch, ran an operating system, and was one of the major projects in the world that used the CHILL programming language.
- holgerschurig 28d ago
  "They split that" ... Most corporate companies have a (pointless?) 7-year cycle of "we need to diversificate" followed by a "we need to concentrate". That is/was also visible at at Siemens. As a result, the Siemens from now is quite different to the Siemens from 15 years ago.
  - cestith 23d ago
    That is true enough, but that wasn’t the question. This thread started with someone being surprised that Siemens would hold a patent suited to a telecoms company. The patent was issued years ago, hence it expiring.
ninalanyon 28d ago
They certainly did, they also made mobile phones.
- grishka 28d ago
  And quite cheap and hackable ones at that.

Siemens started as a communications company. The first invention was a type of telegraph. Siemens had a division called Siemens Communications Systems. They split that into Siemens Communications Systems (public networks) and Siemens Information Systems (PBX systems and such) in the mid 1980s. The company did a reorg in the late 1990s into four divisions. Those were rail, industrial, power generation, and information & communications systems. That was again called Siemens Communications Systems. SCS was rebranded to Unify in 2013. Unify was sold to Atos in 2016. Mitel bought it from Atos around 2023. Unify is currently still a subsidiary of Mitel. Parts of the communications division had been split off and went through separate M&A activity previously. The DCO and EWSD were notable digital central office phone switches. The EWSD ended up at Nokia through some M&A activity. The EWSD was commissioned into phone company offices right up until 2017. When I was in the dial-up ISP world and had dozens of contacts within phone companies, the joke backronym for it was Europe’s Worst Switching Device. It was actually pretty reliable if the software was kept up to date, but there are hilarious stories about early models and unpatched installations. I have one of those stories in personal memory. Fun facts: EWSD was a joint project in some way with Bosch, ran an operating system, and was one of the major projects in the world that used the CHILL programming language.

holgerschurig 28d ago
"They split that" ... Most corporate companies have a (pointless?) 7-year cycle of "we need to diversificate" followed by a "we need to concentrate". That is/was also visible at at Siemens. As a result, the Siemens from now is quite different to the Siemens from 15 years ago.
- cestith 23d ago
  That is true enough, but that wasn’t the question. This thread started with someone being surprised that Siemens would hold a patent suited to a telecoms company. The patent was issued years ago, hence it expiring.

ninalanyon 28d ago

They certainly did, they also made mobile phones.

grishka 28d ago
And quite cheap and hackable ones at that.