BANGALORE, INDIA: In an open-ended question about 40G and 100G technology leaders, most service providers named Nortel as the top vendor.

This is according to analytic firm Infonetic Research's, 'Optical Equipment Vendor Ratings: Global Service Provider Survey, a part of Infonetics' Optical Continuous Research Service (CRS).

Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical for Infonetics Research, said: "Carriers by and large see Alcatel-Lucent as both a commercial and technological leader in the optical equipment market, but they have issues with their pricing. Huawei performed surprisingly well in our open-ended questions about leading optical equipment vendors, especially considering most of the carriers we interviewed are based in North America and EMEA, where Huawei has little to no presence."

Other companies making the list (not in order of ranking) include ADVA, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Infinera, Juniper, Mintera, NEC, Nokia Siemens, and StrataLight/Opnext.

There were several surprises in the ratings results; for example, Huawei received the third highest average rating for service and support, stereotypically considered Huawei's weakness.