Nortel CS1500 softswitch numbers – the company responds

Fierce's article on Nortel's CS1500 softswitch numbers and how they compare to MetaSwitch's North American sales has stirred up a number of comments, including a response from Ryan Saxby Hill, a spokesperson for Nortel-

"I noticed your article on our CS1500 news and thought perhaps I can step in with some context. There seems to be some confusion about how Nortel and Metaswitch compare in the softswitch market. Based on our understanding of the numbers quoted in your article, the MetaSwitch softswitch sales overall (so sales made into the small and tier 1&2 service provider markets) are being compared to Nortel's CS1500 which is a product that targets regional/small service provider market.

When we look at the softswitch market overall, Nortel is clearly the leader. According to Dell'Oro Nortel has been consistently ranked as number one in this market since 2002, with 21% market share for Q4 08. Metaswitch is listed with 2.5%. Dell'Oro also recently put out a press release on their Q4 numbers for IP Telephony overall, where Metaswitch doesn't even warrant mention: http://www.delloro.com/news/2009/CIPT031209.htm."

Nortel social media manager Bo Gowan also "tweeted" a response to a couple of lines teaser I threw out on the @FierceVoIP twitter feed yesterday--

BoGowan@FierceVoIP Keep in mind that the CS1500 is one of several Nortel carrier VoIP platforms, a space we've been #1 in for 7 years for mkt share

Upon review and discussion of various notes and conversations, it becomes clear that I should have stuck with one yardstick - customer wins - rather than units sold. Customer wins are the clearest unencumbered number available, given that CS1500 and most of MetaSwitch's customer wins have been in the North American Tier 2/3 space, based upon the impressions we've been given to date. 

Using the number of units sold gets to be more sketchy, based upon publicly available information and would require matching products/features/configurations in such a way that would require a granular level of detail unlikely to be shared by either vendor. AT&T or a Tier 2 carrier is going to order more and bigger boxes/ports than a Tier 3 carrier.

Obviously, I would welcome further clarifications from either vendor, so long as comments are made on the record and attributable to a spokesperson from the company.

For more:
- Upon further review, Nortel softswitch wins not so impressive - Updated
- Nortel soldiers on with carrier VoIP

Related article
The death and life of Nortel - FierceTelecom