Suddenly, it's Huawei
Strong DSLAM sales from France to Chile as bankers bidding for IPO
Huawei is perhaps months from an IPO that values the company at about $10B, joining China Netcom and TCL on world markets. The biggest banks in the world are fighting to lead the deal, while Huawei is increasing international presence. U.S. investors were particularly impressed with the 3COM deal, because equipment dealers are looking for a high margin alternative to Cisco and will sell 3COM/Huawei hard. That's actually a small part of the corporate story, which is based on a strong domestic position giving economies of scale. Current sales of about $1B a quarter are less than half similar at Lucent or Nortel, but that gap will close rapidly.
Huawei in mid 2003 jumped to a regular second place in the DSLAM market, as China Telecom became by far the world's largest customer. They now are winning contracts around the world. Hanling writes me they've sold 105K lines to Telemar in Brazil, including 40K of IP DSLAMs. Brasil Telecom took 100K lines, and he's optimistic about Embratel as well. Entel in Chile has ordered hundreds of Huawei mini-DSLAMs to extend coverage, and competitor IFX is also deploying. Czech Telecom is taking 200K ports, and Telkom South Africa is buying mini-DSLAMs.
LDCOM is a key player in France, suddenly the most interesting European country on the net, and Huawei is providing them not just DSLAMs but the complete backbone network. China's ZTE, the U.S. Chinese hybrid UTStarcom, and the Koreans are fighting hard for many of the same customers, with Lucent, Siemens, Alcatel and Nokia all having to adjust prices.
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