Cisco Feeds Internet Need for Equipment

Cisco, the world's largest Internet equipment supplier, expects to expand its Chinese market share as growth of China's Internet soars in the next 10 years.

"On the basis of the double-digit growth of Internet users in recent years, China's Internet market will take off dramatically in this decade since the primitive accumulation has reached a certain level," said Rick Justice, Cisco's senior vice-president of worldwide field operations.

Justice predicted that the mass construction of Internet infrastructure expected in the coming years would result in a huge demand for network-related equipment and systems.

"China currently is in the corner of transition from the traditional voice communication service to the packet transmission of data and video and wireless services," he said.

Cisco has gained a strong footing in the domestic telecom and Internet market since 1994. Their number of local employees has passed 500.

The strong desire for Cisco products was fully exposed at the company's annual event Cisco Networkers 2000 in Beijing last week.

The conference attracted more than 2,000 participants from all telecom sectors.

Carson Chen, vice-president of Cisco's broadband systems technology service provider line, said he expects the broadband IP network to be widely deployed in the coming years.

"China has a huge market room to deploy broadband IP networks though the country should deal with the infrastructure and operation service at first," Chen said.

David Kirk, senior vice-president of Cisco, said at the conference that the new world network would converge optical-fiber, fixed-line and wireless transmission technologies together, to transfer voice, data and video through an integrated network.

Kirk said the rise of the Internet economy can be tied to an emerging "Internet ecosystem", a new model for e-businesses to serve e-customers.

"Since Internet ecosystems are open, we encourage new members to participate and foster a collaborative relationship among members," Kirk said.

To Internet system providers like Cisco, more online players mean more equipment sales and more profits.

The worldwide Internet explosion has boosted Cisco's revenue from US$1.3 billion in 1994 to US$12.2 billion last year.



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