EPIK Says No to Sycamore
"We tested [the SN 8000] and came to that decision a while ago," says Husein Cumber, a spokesman for EPIK. EPIK announced its intent to deploy Sycamore gear on October 31, 2000.
"What we announced several quarters ago was an intent to deploy equipment, not a trial" says Richard Williams, a Sycamore spokesman. "The decision not to deploy was mutual." It's not clear what kind of revenue such a contract would have meant for Sycamore, but sagging sales have plagued the company (along with everyone else) for months. Recently the equipment maker predicted that revenues for its first fiscal quarter of 2001 would be at least 67 percent lower than the comparable year-ago quarter (see Sycamore Waterlogged).
Though bad news seems to be growing on Sycamore trees, the company is hanging some hope on its contracts with NTT Corp. and KPNQwest NV (Nasdaq/Amsterdam: KQIP), which were just landed in the past few months.
As far as EPIK is concerned, Corvis Corp. (Nasdaq: CORV) may have better news in the near future. The carrier says it is still in the process of evaluating Corvis's CorWave Optical Convergence Switch for use in metropolitan area networks. EPIK announced in July that deployment details regarding the switch would be worked out this quarter.
EPIK won't say how big that deal is potentially. The company did reiterate, however, that a deployment decision has not been made and no revenue has been committed to Corvis.
The carrier currently buys metro DWDM gear from ONI Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ONIS), long-haul DWDM gear from Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT), and Internet routers from Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR).
- Phil Harvey, Senior Editor, Light Reading
http://www.lightreading.com
>want to accuse me of being bias, then
>provide some reasons and argue the facts.
>At least when I say LR is biased, I provide
>my reasons.
Oh Boo-Hoo. You better get back to work, now that EPIK won't buy your equipment.