Reliant FORM 10-K manual Wireline Networks, Customers

Globally, enterprise customers continue to invest in equipment for their communications networks, primarily for network security and resiliency, for voice over IP, WLANs and for virtual private networks. In the United States and Canada, enterprise customers are investing in voice over IP as they transition from legacy voice products to our enterprise line of communication servers and remote gateway products that enable conversion from voice communication networks to packet-based networks supporting data, voice and multimedia communications. In EMEA, our customers are beginning to invest in new technologies, such as voice over IP. In the Asia Pacific region, Enterprise Networks customers are investing in networking equipment to improve the connections among their regional sites and branch offices. In CALA, enterprises are continuing to drive demand for networking equipment that supports the growing use of the Internet in the region.

Customers

We offer our products and services to a broad range of enterprise customers around the world, including large businesses and their branch offices, small businesses and home offices, as well as government agencies, educational and other institutions and utility organizations. Key industry sectors for our business customers include the telecommunications, high-technology manufacturing, government (including the defense sector) and financial services sectors. We also serve customers in the healthcare, retail, education, hospitality, services, transportation and other industry sectors. We are currently focused on increasing our market presence with enterprise customers. In particular, we intend to focus on leading enterprise customers with high performance networking needs. Certain of our service provider customers also act as a distribution channel for our Enterprise Networks sales and include incumbent local telephone companies, competitive local telephone companies and system integrators. None of our Enterprise Networks customers represented more than 10% of Nortel Networks consolidated revenues in 2003.

Competition

Our principal competitors in the sale of our Enterprise Networks solutions are Cisco Systems, Inc., Avaya Inc., Siemens, Alcatel S.A., and NEC Corporation. Avaya is our largest competitor in the sale of voice equipment while Cisco is our largest competitor in the sale of data networking equipment to enterprises. We also compete with smaller companies that address specific niches, such as Juniper Networks, Inc., 3Com Corporation, Foundry Networks, Inc., Extreme Networks, Inc. and Enterasys Networks, Inc. in data networking; and Mitel Networks Corporation in Internet-based voice communications solutions. We expect competition to remain intense as enterprises look for ways to maximize the effectiveness of their existing networks while reducing ongoing capital expenditures and operating costs.

The principal global factors of competition in the sale of our Enterprise Networks solutions include:

•technology leadership, product features and availability;

•product quality and reliability;

•conformity to existing and emerging regulatory and industry standards;

•sales distribution and channel marketing strategy;

•warranty and customer support;

•price and cost of ownership;

•interoperability with other networking products;

•installed base of product;

•alternative solutions offered to enterprises by service providers;

•the leveraging of existing customer-supplier relationships; and

•the availability of distribution channels.

Wireline Networks

Products

Our Wireline Networks portfolio addresses the demand by our service provider customers for cost efficient data, voice and multimedia communications solutions. Our wireline solutions, including related professional services, simplify network architectures by bringing data, voice, multimedia and emerging broadband applications for revenue generating services together on one packet network.

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