Cisco and Juniper may have always had the upper hand in delivering edge networking gear, but it appears that their rival Alcatel-Lucent may have beaten both companies out of a potentially lucrative deal with Verizon Business. Although no official announcement has been made, reports have emerged in both Light Reading and Telephony that Verizon Business has awarded Alcatel-Lucent a large Ethernet service contract.
Both articles cite a Morgan Keegan & Company research note that says that the RBOC may have awarded the Franco-American company a $150 million initial deal. As part of this potential deal, Morgan Keegan analyst Simon Leopold believes that Verizon Business will likely deploy Alcatel-Lucent's 7450 Ethernet Services Switch versus Juniper's MX series. But where there's a loss, there could be a gain as Leopold thinks that Juniper may have won a contract to supply its gear to AT&T for its OPT-E-MAN Ethernet access service. Such a deal could be a boon for AT&T since Juniper has not been traditionally a major supplier to the RBOC.
For more:
- Here's Telephony's analysis
- Light Reading also has this article