Demand for mobile backhaul upgrades helped the service provider edge router segment expand over 25% year on year in the third quarter of 2010, according to analyst firm Dell’Oro.
Revenues from edge router sales surpassed $1.5 billion globally in Q3, driven chiefly by increasing demand for edge routers in mobile backhaul networks in North America, said Dell’Oro VP Shin Umeda.
“Wireless service providers are beefing up their network capacity with IP/MPLS technologies as they race to roll out new high-speed data services and plan for the growth of mobile data traffic,” Umeda said in a statement.
It was a good Q3 for Cisco Systems in the service provider edge router market, as the company not only held its No. 1 ranking in the Dell’Oro study but increased its market share lead.
Q3 was also good for Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei Technologies, both which moved up a notch in the vendor rankings. AlcaLu took over the No. 2 spot, bumping Juniper Networks down from second to third place. Huawei slipped ahead of Tellabs for the No. 4 spot.