|
The decision not to emphasize 10Gbps channel speeds was made in late 1996, when it was not so obvious that the market would move to that speed. In fact, LU's largest customers, AT&T at the head of the line (remember this was just past divestiture) told LU NOT to go to the faster speed, but to increase channel count via DWDM. You act as though LU was alone in making this call, but every other major optical vendor aside from NT made the same decision. Where were Alcatel, Siemens, NEC and Ciena with their 10G solutions? By the time it became clear that 10G was a necessity, NT already had a 15 month lead in development. This is likely due to NT's relatively different customer base - WorldCom, Sprint and MCI, none of which bought anything from LU before the acquisition of ASND. QWest, Global Crossing, Level3, Williams, et al. were not much of a consideration in 1996, but you have to give NT the credit for a bold move. Don't act as though it was soooo obvious after the fact. |
