Telecommunications equipment

Telecommunications equipment (also telecoms equipment or communications equipment) is hardware used for the purposes of telecommunications. Since the 1990s the boundary between telecoms equipment and IT hardware has become blurred as a result of the growth of the internet and its increasing role in the transfer of telecoms data.

Types

Telecommunications equipment can be broadly broken down into the following categories:

• Public switching equipment
  • Analogue switches
  • Digital switches
    • Voice over IP switches
• Transmission equipment
  • Transmission lines
    • Optical fiber
    • Local loops
  • Base transceiver stations
  • Free-space optical communication
    • Laser communication in space
  • Multiplexers
  • Communications satellites
• Customer premises equipment (CPE)
  • Private switches
  • Local area networks (LANs)
  • Modems
  • Mobile phones
  • Landline telephones
  • Answering machines
  • Teleprinters
  • Fax machines
  • Pagers
  • Routers
  • Wireless devices

Vendors

The world's ten largest telecommunications equipment vendors, 2017 revenues are:

Largest Vendors by 2017 Revenue (billion US dollars) Huawei $92.55 Cisco Systems $48.00 Fujitsu $38.57 Nokia $27.73 Ericsson $24.16 NEC Corporation $23.95 Qualcomm $22.29 ZTE $16.71 Corning $10.12 Motorola Solutions $6.38

Largest By Country 2017 China $109.26 United States $86.79 Japan $62.52 Finland $27.73 Sweden $24.16

See also

• Networking hardware
• List of networking hardware vendors
• List of telephone switches