No decision has been made yet around rebranding of the telecom powerhouse that will emerge from Alcatel’s acquisition of Lucent, but the costs involved in such a massive rebranding effort may keep this on a backburner for awhile. MarketWatch is reporting that SBC spent as much as $1 billion to rebrand themselves as AT&T, after acquiring the remains of the best known telecom brand in the universe. When the Alcatel/Lucent deal was announced, Alcatel CEO Alcatel Serge Tchuruk said that they would “choose a name later on.” The MarketWatch article makes the points that the new company has more important things to worry about for now, like integrating two large organizations on opposite sides of the Atlantic, trimming 10% of their 88,000-person workforce, and finding other ways to cut expenses to make the transaction pay off for investors. It also points out that with increasing global tension over these kind of cross-border mergers, Alcatel and Lucent may want to maintain both brands to forestall any domestic opposition.