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The board of Alcatel SA meets Saturday to hash out the final details of a merger with Lucent Technologies Inc. to form a Paris-based company that would be in the top tier of telecommunications-equipment makers in the key U.S. market.

If the deal goes ahead, an announcement could be made within days, according to people familiar with the matter.

Combined, the companies would be better-placed to win contracts with U.S. telephone companies and wireless providers such as Cingular, which so far have eluded Alcatel despite its 15-year presence in the U.S. Alcatel has always been at a disadvantage in the U.S. because by the time it arrived, rivals such as Lucent and Nortel Networks Corp. had installed most of the fixed-line phone system.

The deal also would strengthen Alcatel, the leading world-wide maker of broadband-access equipment, at a time when the U.S. has fallen behind its European and Asian peers in terms of providing high-speed Internet lines to its people.

In 2000, the U.S. was third in broadband deployment, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Over the past five years, countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Belgium have surpassed the U.S., which has fallen to 12th place.

Alcatel's specialty is digital subscriber lines, or DSL, which updates regular telephone lines to carry high-speed Internet and digital television.

As part of a $1.7 billion, five-year contract with SBC Communications, renamed AT&T Inc. following its acquisition of rival AT&T Corp., Alcatel is overhauling the phone network that serves 18 million households in 13 U.S. states. It will upgrade old copper phone lines with fiber-optic cables, allowing AT&T to offer digital television that includes video on demand and high-definition TV, high-speed Internet and other services to consumers.

By merging with Lucent, Alcatel would also gain access to the U.S. company's strong mobile-phone-equipment division. Lucent's wireless equipment runs on so-called CDMA, which is used in 14% of the world markets, including the U.S. and Latin America, according to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

"Alcatel had been a second-tier player in the mobile business," said Jeffrey Schlesinger, an Alcatel analyst of UBS AG. Though not considered a high-growth area, Lucent's wireless unit "would make them the second-biggest seller of mobile-infrastructure equipment in terms of revenues."

Alcatel's U.S. gambit began in the 1990s, as Chief Executive Serge Tchuruk worked to transform the French company from a conglomerate that owned everything from vineyards to magazines into a telecom player. It has made $18 billion of acquisitions in the U.S. and Canada since 1991 and employs 8,600 North American employees out of a total work force of 58,000.

Mr. Tchuruk sought a merger with Lucent in 2001, but the talks fell apart because Lucent management felt the deal was turning into a takeover.