NEW YORK, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Worldwide sales of carrier Ethernet switch/routers rose 16% in the fourth quarter of 2006 and ended the year up 105% to $1.45 billion, according to the Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router Quarterly Market Tracker service published by Heavy Reading (http://www.heavyreading.com/), the market research division of CMP Technology's Light Reading (http://www.lightreading.com/).

"We entered 2006 with high expectations for rapid growth in carrier Ethernet switch/router (CESR) sales, and the outstanding performance of large vendors such as Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, and Huawei drove the market through the roof," says Stan Hubbard, Senior Analyst at Heavy Reading and author of the Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router Quarterly Market Tracker. "While market-share leader Cisco posted rock-solid growth throughout the year, the big story in 4Q06 was the surge in sales for No. 2 vendor Alcatel-Lucent, which gained 4 market share points on the back of record revenues from Europe, Asia, and Latin America."

"The world's largest operators and hundreds of other service providers have embraced carrier Ethernet as a service and network convergence technology of choice, and have been ramping deployments in a big way over the past two years. Operators will be pouring billions of dollars into carrier Ethernet access, transport, and service switching equipment in the coming years as they continue to transition away from traditional Sonet/SDH and ATM networks toward Ethernet and IP/MPLS," says Hubbard.

The platforms covered in this report are being deployed to support some of the industry's fastest growing services and applications, such as enterprise Ethernet connectivity, Ethernet access to IP/MPLS VPNs, VOIP, residential triple play/IPTV/VOD, and mobility in the form of wireless backhaul transport.

Heavy Reading's research suggests equipment vendors that provide a full suite of carrier Ethernet platforms or at least partner with others as part of an integrated solution will be best positioned to capitalize on the promising market-growth opportunities. A typical end-to-end solution would include a variety of Ethernet access platforms, CESR products, Ethernet service routers, and Ethernet-centric optical equipment.

CESR market leaders Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent offer such broad portfolios, and this has served them well as vendor competition has intensified. No. 3 CESR vendor Huawei and No. 4 vendor Siemens also boast broad and growing carrier Ethernet portfolios. Both Siemens and No. 5 vendor Nortel, meanwhile, have recently generated news by gaining customer traction with new connection-oriented Ethernet technology called Provider Backbone Transport (PBT).

Heavy Reading's Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router Quarterly Market Tracker delivers a complete accounting of telecom equipment manufacturer revenues in the CESR sector, including quarter-by-quarter revenue and market-share breakouts for each supplier, sales by geographic region and application, and revenue projections through 2010 by region and application. The quarterly tracking service also analyzes each vendor's market strategy and identifies and analyzes customer wins, providing granular insight into this emerging sector unavailable from any other source. It provides a comprehensive list of more than 200 operators around the world that have purchased CESR platforms.

The Heavy Reading report analyzes 13 vendors that are generating sales from CESR products or that plan to roll out CESR products in the near term. Equipment vendors examined include Alcatel-Lucent, ANDA Networks, Atrica, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Huawei, MRV Communications, Nortel Networks, Siemens, and World Wide Packets.

The Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router Quarterly Market Tracker is distributed in PowerPoint and Excel formats. Quarterly reports may be purchased individually or as part of an annual subscription.

For more information, or to receive a free PowerPoint demo of the Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router Quarterly Market Tracker, please contact:

Dave Williams Sales Director, Heavy Reading 858-485-8870 dave.williams@heavyreading.com Press/analyst contact: Dennis Mendyk Managing Director, Heavy Reading 201-587-2154 mendyk@heavyreading.com About Heavy Reading

Heavy Reading is an independent market research organization offering quantitative analysis of telecom technology to service providers, vendors, and investors. Its mandate is to provide the comprehensive competitive analysis needed today for the deployment of profitable networks based on next-generation hardware and software.

About CMP Technology

CMP Technology (http://www.cmp.com/) is a marketing solutions company serving the technology industry. Through its market-leading portfolio of trusted information brands, CMP has earned the confidence of more technology professionals than any other media company. As a result, CMP is the premier provider of access, insight and actionable programs designed to connect sellers and buyers in ways that yield superior return on investment. CMP Technology is a subsidiary of United Business Media (http://www.unitedbusinessmedia.com/), a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion.

CONTACT: Dave Williams, Sales Director, +1-858-485-8870,
dave.williams@heavyreading.com, or Press\analyst contact: Dennis Mendyk,
Managing Director, +1-201-587-2154, mendyk@heavyreading.com, both of Heavy
Reading

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