Armed with recently acquired U.S. wireline companies, Swedish equipment vendor Ericsson described its evolving wireline identity at a press conference today during the NXTcomm trade show in Chicago.

“If you didn’t think of Ericsson as a fixed broadband supplier, you will do that going forward,” said Angel Ruiz, president of Ericsson’s North American operations.

Ericsson’s recent acquisitions of U.S. companies--Entrisphere, Redback Networks and Tandberg Television--suit its desire to be a global leader of IP networks, said CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg, because although Europe drove the global mobile market, “With IP, we’re back with the U.S. in the leading seat.”

Ericsson is already putting its considerable resources behind its new additions. By September, the research and development staff of edge router Redback will be double what it was when Ericsson acquired the company, it said today. Much of that increase is coming from existing Ericsson employees previously dedicated to legacy products that are being reassigned to Redback’s products.

“Its been great to have that access to ramp engineering,” said Kevin DeNuccio, Redback’s president.

About 2500 of Ericsson’s 6500 North American employees are dedicated to R&D, the company said, and about 1000 of those R&D workers are based in Silicon Valley, where Redback is based.

Ericsson thanked another U.S. acquisition, Entrisphere, for its recent win of a contract to supply AT&T with gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) gear starting next year. And Ericsson won’t stop there. Though Verizon Communications picked three GPON suppliers last year (Alcatel-Lucent, Tellabs and Motorola), Svanberg said, “We would continue to fight hard to see what we can do for [Verizon].”

Tandberg TV CEO Eric Cooney stepped forward at the press conference to present Ericsson’s vision for IPTV. He showed a brief video demonstrating interactive video applications surrounding a Nascar event. The viewer used his remote control to bring up real-time information on the race, including the speed, position and lap count of any driver he chose. He also brought up a small window to simultaneously watch a pre-race interview of his favorite driver. And he used a feature called “hot-spotting,” in which users who admire, say, a particular driver’s sunglasses, can purchase those sunglasses on their TVs. “Point and click,” Cooney said. “I like ‘em, I own ‘em.”