Infonetics: Metro Grows, Long-Haul Slows

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Worldwide revenues for intelligent optical metro network hardware hit $1.02 billion in 1Q02, a 15% increase from 4Q01, while long haul and submarine decreased 31%, from $1.55 billion to $1.08 billion, according to Infonetics Research's quarterly worldwide market share and forecast service, Intelligent Optical Network Hardware."An interesting trend has emerged: the closer to the customer, the faster spending is increasing, so carrier spending on the edge of the network is holding steady or increasing on a quarter-to-quarter basis," said Infonetics Research principal analyst and co-founder, Michael Howard, lead author of the report. "Since carriers have considerably slowed the build-out of their long haul networks, the decline in long haul and submarine spending isn't surprising. What gives us hope for the optical market, and more generally for the telecom equipment space, is the continuing rise of bandwidth requirements by business and consumers, which translates into our measures of increased spending for optical CPE and metro edge and core equipment."1Q02 Market Highlights:

In a separate release:Worldwide revenues for DSL CPE, cable CPE, and IADs totaled $1.1 billion in 1Q02, according to Infonetics Research's Broadband Hardware quarterly worldwide market share and forecast service. Worldwide totals for DSL CPE units grew 19%, and worldwide totals for DSLAM ports grew 31% in 1Q02. Steady DSL subscriber growth in all geographic regions drove the DSL CPE market in 1Q02."North America DSLAM ports grew 29% in 1Q02, indicating that service providers added new capacity to their DSL networks in 1Q02," said Jon Cordova, Infonetics Research analyst and lead author of the report. "Broadband cable subscriptions grew in 1Q02, but cable operators did not purchase additional CMTS ports to accommodate their growing customer base."DSL CPE, CO/MTU DSLAMs, retrofit DSL DLCs, NG/DLCs, cable CPE, CMTS, IADs, broadband fixed wireless CPE, broadband fixed wireless base stations, and optical last mile CPE are tracked in this service. Companies tracked in this service include ADC Telecommunications, ADTRAN, Alcatel, Alvarion, Cisco Systems, Com21, Lucent, Motorola, Netopia, Nokia, Polycom, Thomson Multimedia, Riverstone, Samsung, Siemens, Sumitomo, Terayon, VINA, ZyXEL, and others.Infonetics Research Inc.