Sep 6, 2005 2:49 PM,

Ovum-RHK: Alcatel becoming #3 in edge routing

By Ed Gubbins

Having recently edged up its share of the fast-growing market for IP edge router equipment, Alcatel is likely to become the sector’s third biggest supplier this year, behind Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, according to research analysis firm Ovum-RHK.

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“Alcatel will have firmly established itself as the number-three edge router vendor by the end of 2005," said Mark Seery, Ovum-RHK’s vice president of IP service infrastructure, in a release issued today by Alcatel.

Surpassed only by Cisco and Juniper, Alcatel captured 11% of the global IP edge routing market in the second quarter of 2005, Ovum-RHK said, a dramatic jump from the first quarter, when it claimed only 3%.

Last week Infonetics Research reported that Alcatel was “close behind” third-place Huawei Technologies in the second-quarter IP edge router market. Huawei’s edge router sales more than doubled in the quarter to give the Chinese vendor 9% of the $820-million market; Cisco and Juniper reported 56% and 21%, respectively.

Last month, Dittberner Associates reported Alcatel bumping Redback Networks from its third-place spot in the “multiservice routing edge” market during the second quarter, capturing 13% of the sector’s $162 million in revenue after taking just 5% in the first quarter.

Much of Alcatel’s second-quarter advance with respect to edge routers occurred in Europe, where shipments to large carrier customers such as France Telecom and Belgium’s Telenet catapulted the vendor’s share of the IP edge router market from 5% to 19% in 3 months. In late April, Alcatel was named (along with Cisco and Siemens) as a chosen supplier of metro IP routing and signaling equipment for British Telecom’s multibillion-dollar “21st Century Network” initiative, suggesting added revenue contributions in the near future.

The overall edge router market grew 7% sequentially to $315 million in the second quarter, Ovum-RHK said, driven by triple play applications, virtual private networks, and the need to aggregate broadband and mobile traffic.