Breaking News: China Telecom Selects Avici SSR Core Routers

摘要

Just as we go to press comes the news that Avici has scored another win through a reseller arrangement, this time with Huawei for China Telecom. Details are sketchy, but this appears to be a slightly smaller deal than the previously announced SURFnet contract discussed below. China Telecom will deploy 10 SSRs, (the half-rack, 20-slot version of the original TSR) at two "supernodes" of its national backbone network located in the populous Guangdong province. As noted previously, Huawei was a 10% customer (4th quarter of 2003), which means that about a million dollars of equipment was shipped for carrier lab evaluation(s). Now we know why. The deal has been estimated at around three and a half million, although its importance far outweighs the monetary value at this point. For a relatively small company like Avici, breaking into a large carrier network in China is a significant accomplishment with great long run potential in a fast growing, multi-billion dollar market. This may be the extent of the deployment, or it could be the equivalent of a "first office application" where a carrier deploys a new platform in one location to gain operational experience in a live environment before moving on with more widespread deployments.