Pat,
I spoke to the BSTDX9000 product manager on Wed. morning about this, and have repeatedly tried to get NN management on the phone about this contract. From Ascend's side, this is the story:
The contract with China Post has been split 3 ways, not 2. They think that Lucent got the third piece with their Yurie enterprise ATM access gear. Ascend got the edge piece, and the reason that China Post is going with the 9000 is A: cost, and B: the network is not expected to big enough to demand CBX500's. They estimate the size of the first year deployment to be less than $20 million, with the potential, but by no means assurance, that there will be significant follow on once a corporate-like market for hiCap IP, frame and ATM actually develops in China. NN has the core piece and Ascend believes that it would be of similar size if not smaller than the edge piece. FWIW, Ascend believes the contract awards were split for political considerations and because NN was the low bidder for the core piece. |
