Carriers rank Nortel as top 40G/100G technology leader in optical equipment vendor survey

BOSTON, USA: Infonetics Research released a new report, Optical Equipment Vendor Ratings: Global Service Provider Survey, which polled purchase decision-makers at carriers in EMEA, North America, and Asia Pacific about optical transmission and switching equipment vendors.

The survey, part of Infonetics’ Optical Continuous Research Service (CRS), asked service providers which optical equipment vendors they have installed and are evaluating for future purchases, which they consider the top optical equipment vendors, which they consider leaders in 40G and 100G technology, and their familiarity with and ratings of optical equipment vendors.

"Carriers by and large see Alcatel-Lucent as both a commercial and technological leader in the optical equipment market, but they have issues with their pricing. Huawei performed surprisingly well in our open-ended questions about leading optical equipment vendors, especially considering most of the carriers we interviewed are based in North America and EMEA, where Huawei has little to no presence,” notes Andrew Schmitt, Infonetics Research’s directing analyst for optical.

Survey highlights
* In an open-ended question about 40G and 100G technology leaders, most service providers named Nortel as the top vendor.
-- Other companies making the list (not in order of ranking) include ADVA, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Infinera, Juniper, Mintera, NEC, Nokia Siemens, and StrataLight/Opnext.

* Service providers rated eight optical equipment vendors (Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens, Nortel, and Tellabs) on eight criteria: technology, product roadmap, security, management, price-to-performance ratio, pricing, financial stability, and service and support.
-- There were several surprises in the ratings results; for example, Huawei received the third highest average rating for service and support, stereotypically considered Huawei’s weakness.