While many may scoff at giving Wall Street bean counters a deciding vote in the future of networking, we have to remember that these guys are going to have to finance any major changes in infrastructure and any new service providers. One indication that Wall Street is right is that optical components and fiber are being promoted as higher-growth opportunities than the equipment that would incorporate these components and the service networks that would use that equipment. Service opportunity equals demand. Demand equals new devices.
New devices equals new components.
Well, service provider stocks have generally been tanking, and the major equipment players such as Nortel Networks, Lucent and Cisco have also fallen. The problem is that we're looking in the wrong place. What's more, this service provider segment is buying fiber equipment. This year alone, thousands of new fiber remotes have been deployed. Alcatel and Marconi, two offshore equipment giants, have quietly eaten the lunch of our domestic equipment players in the fiber remote market.