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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (2038)	9/18/1998 12:08:00 PM
From: DenverTechie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Mike, this is quite an interesting post about NORTEL. Thanks for reminding me I still owe Ken P. a response to #1946 on the T1,T3 mux replacement issue. I'll respond to that one separately and directly to his post later. Without going into deep technical explanations, I will try to answer the basic questions with some justifications for answers. I think your concerns and the concerns of the poster regarding preparedness for the transition to packet switched networks are valid. And I think NORTEL sees the downturn in circuit switched business and upturn in packet switched business. This explains the Bay Networks acquisition, the continuing development of ATM based systems, and push on DWDM systems. But it is hard to turn a battleship on a dime and on a relative basis, their circuit switched equipment business is still more than healthy, thank you very much. With more than $3 billion invested in legacy channelized equipment in the PSTN, not to mention the legacy (and even new "open architecture") Operations Support Systems (OSS) to work with the channelized equipment, it is not going away anytime soon. From a personal perspective, although customers are interested in the IP based packet switched solutions that are coming on strong, they inevitably always come back to "what do you have to economically work with my existing network that allows me to grow, expand my business right now?" As for the notion that NORTEL is weak in ATM, that is a controversial and debatable issue. I take exception to several of the statements regarding the Passport, Vector and Concorde switches. First, regardless of the services than an ATM switch interfaces, when the backplane is cell based (ATM), it is standard practice by ALL vendors to count that towards ATM revenue. Since there are very few pure ATM networks out there, the initial use and marketability of Passport type switches/routers is to "mix" various types of services into a single bit stream (TDM/Frame Relay is a good example). I see nothing wrong with how NORTEL has positioned Passport. It's how real users set up their networks for now. On the contrary of the assertion that NORTEL has created a myth they are strong in ATM, I contend the poster has used semantics and jargon speak to attempt to persuade you the Passport is not an ATM switch when it is. Not much to say about the Vector, except I think the effort to "totally re-engineer and built some redundancy features into it" does NOT amount to "nothing more than just slap their name on it". A total re-engineering and reliability enhancement of an ATM switch is complex and non-trivial. I cannot argue with the contention that carriers still see it as a LAN ATM switch and this perception will continue to hurt sales going forward. Concorde is a large, carrier class core ATM switch. Not much demand for these yet, but when you sell even 1, it is a big deal. The initial leaders (in 1993 when I was looking for a core ATM for Time Warner's Full Service Network) there were only 2 true contenders that could deliver the goods and Concorde was not one of them.. 1. ATT/Lucent Globeview 2000 2. Fujitsu The NORTEL Concorde was still in development along with the Siemens. So the contention that Concorde was one of the first in not correct. And it has had trouble catching up ever since. To answer your direct questions: 1. I believe NORTEL/Bay does have the products the telcos and MSOs need to have for their network upgrades -- both traditional and packet based. I'm less enthusiastic about their offerings for ISPs. 2. My opinion is that they are not as weak in the ATM arena as the post you attached suggests. I do not agree they have created a "myth" about their ATM strength, although there may be some marketing games going on -- there always are in this industry and one always looks past it in analytical evaluations of offerings.