Ascend sees fast growth in Mideast market
biz.yahoo.com
DUBAI, May 27 (Reuters) - Ascend Communications Inc., a U.S. computer
networking equipment maker, said on Thursday its Middle East business was
growing swiftly as the region's Internet providers multiply and telephone firms
seek new technology.
''It's a very fast growing region for us,'' senior vice-president Francois Barrault
said in Dubai after visiting Saudi Arabia, where the once-banned Internet has
opened up and 40 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been licensed.
Regional sales in the second quarter of 1999 were four times those for the whole of 1998, but he would not give
figures as the firm is in the process of being acquired by Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU - news).
The merger, worth about $23 billion, is due to be completed by the end of June.
In the United Arab Emirates, Ascend has a 50 percent market share in equipment for analogue dialup to the
Internet and a 60 percent market share in Egypt, officials said. Other areas where the firm is active include
Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
The firm started up its Middle East operations in 1997.
Barrault said projects to install new technology could often be implemented more swiftly in the young Middle
East market than more developed areas, such as Europe, where ageing networks often slowed improvements.
He also said the process could move faster because many Middle East executives were younger than their
European counterparts, often in their 20s or 30s, and had been brought up on ''mobile telephones and the
Internet.''
The California-based Ascend is one of the biggest providers of so-called remote access concentrator products
used by Internet service providers for dialup access to the Internet. It has developed technology to allow the
simultaneous transmission of voice, video and data.
Networking gear is used to link computers that manage huge banks of data, and also to build and maintain the
Internet. |
