Nortel has announced a PBB win at Verizon, the same provider who reportedly said it would not be using PBT. SInce PBT is officially PBB-TE and is a simple upgrade from PBB, we believe the sequence of events here shows the overall lack of media sanity on key technology issues.
First, Verizon’s selection of VPLS over PBT, as reported, was a core network decision not metro, where most of Verizon’s dollars are spent. Second, the “decision” had never been in doubt, as we reported when it was first announced, since Verizon’s core network isn’t even a candidate for Ethernet deployment.
In any event, there is no problem in the Carrier Ethernet market, and IP players may be looking wistfully at the opportunity there before long. Metro buildout is clearly on a faster pace worldwide than core build-out for revenue reasons.