Initial reaction to Oracle’s announced deal to buy Tekelec isn’t generating positive buzz on Wall Street.

In fact, investors so far are cool to the deal.

Oracle shares finished down 2.3 percent, or 73 cents, to close at $31.25 Monday.

Just before 11 a.m., Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) shares traded down 1.7 percent, or 56 cents, at $31.42. And Oracle hasn’t even said yet how much it is paying for the privately held global telecommunications networking technology firm that calls Morrisville home.

Tekelec declined to talk about the deal when contacted this morning for further comment.

And the local folks may not have much to say later, either. WRAL was told that Oracle might talk more later, assuming the deal closes.

In joint announcements, both companies assured management and employees at Tekelec that they were expected to become part of the much, much larger Oracle. It’s market cap is $149 billion, and Oracle’s top executive Larry Ellison is one of the world’s richest men as well as one of the most powerful executives in technology.

But Tekelec employees appear headed for some more uncertainty just 14 months after the company went private in a deal valued at $780 million as private equity firm Siris Capital Group and some additional partners led a buyout. In the year before that transaction was disclosed, Tekelec’s long-time CEO Frank Plastina left and company shares traded well under $6 a share. The going private deal was valued at $11 a share.

Under private ownership, Tekelec sold a mobile business unit based in the Netherlands and emerged as a global player in so-called Diameter routing.

Diameter is a key part of so-called LTE, or long-term evolution, technology for mobile and wireless data providers worldwide. It’s the backbone for the “4G” wireless broadband networks being rolled out across the U.S. today, and Tekelec sees LTE spreading worldwide.

Among Tekelec’s customers is T-Mobile. Wins like that one obviously attracted Oracle’s attention.

The buy of Tekelec comes just weeks after Oracle said it would spend $2.1 billion on another player in the mobile data space – Massachusetts-based Acme Packet. Acme focuses on mobile data security.

And as Oracle said in announcing the Tekelec deal, Oracle pointed out the world is going mobile. So it wants the intellectual property and products that Tekelec as well as Acme provide, making Oracle – in its view – a stronger competitor for big telecom and communications provider business.

These deals also reflect Oracle’s commitment to a telecom-focused strategy as a chart included with this post as provided with Oracle’s Tekelec acquisition spells out.

Tekelec’s spacious Morrisville headquarters is certainly one of the most striking architecturally in the Triangle. Inside, its ever-expanding “patent wall” denoting the company’s intellectual property successes is a site to behold.

It certainly will seem strange to see Oracle logos everywhere.

But in the ever-changing world of Tekelec and its workers, change has come to be routine, not unexpected.

[TEKELEC ARCHIVE: Check out seven years of Lenovo stories as reported in WRAL Tech Wire.]