BETHESDA, Md. -- According to DITTBERNER's Worldwide FY2004 NGN Shipments Analysis, worldwide Media Gateway and Softswitch VoIP port shipments reached 36.8 million units.

With over 100 deployments by 33 carriers worldwide, Huawei U-SYS solution leads the worldwide VoIP Media Gateway and Softswitch market in 2004 with 24.48% of port shipments. Nortel Networks (Nasdaq: NT) is second with 18.21% market share. Sonus (Nasdaq: SONS), UTStarcom (Nasdaq: UTSI) and Siemens (Nasdaq: SI) rounded out the top five.

Dittberner research shows that during 2004 an increasing number of network operators started the evolution of their fixed network towards the next generation network architecture at both the tandem/transit and local/class 5 levels. “The migration of PSTN to packet telephony is inevitable” stated Lilian Tau, VP market research at Dittberner Associates Inc. “There is no universal NGN solution architecture and it is up to each carrier to evolve its network at different rates depending on the state of its infrastructure, on the specific market situation, and on regulatory framework conditions.”

Dittberner Associates Inc.