Telecommunications equipment

Hardware used for telecommunication purposes

Smartphones are one of the most popular telecoms equipment.

Telecommunications equipment (also telecoms equipment or communications equipment) is a type of hardware which is 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.^[1]^[2]

Types

Telecommunications equipment can be broadly broken down into the following categories:^[3]

Public switching equipment
- Analogue switches
- Digital switches
  - Voice over IP switches
  - Virtual reality (VR)
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)
- Customer office terminal
- Private switches
- Local area networks (LANs)
- Modems
- Mobile phones
- Landline telephones
- Answering machines
- Teleprinters
- Fax machines
- Pagers
- Routers
- Wireless devices

Semiconductors

Most of the essential elements of modern telecommunication are built from MOSFETs (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors), including mobile devices, transceivers, base station modules, routers, RF power amplifiers,^[4] microprocessors, memory chips, and telecommunication circuits.^[5] As of 2005, telecommunications equipment account for 16.5% of the annual microprocessor market.^[6]

Vendors

The world's largest telecommunications equipment vendors by revenues in 2017 are:^[7]

Largest vendors by 2017 revenue (billion US dollars)
Huawei	$92.55
Cisco Systems	$48.00
Ciena	$38.57
Nokia	$27.73
ECI Telecom	$24.16
NEC Corporation	$23.95
Qualcomm	$22.297
ZTE	$16.71
Corning	$10.12
Motorola Solutions	$6.38
Juniper Networks	$5.03

Largest by country (2017)
United States	$94.62
Japan	$62.52
Finland	$27.73
Sweden	$24.16

References

^ "Telecoms equipment - We have the technology". The Economist. 1 October 1998. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
^ "Twisted pair - Nokia and Siemens pool their network divisions to form a new firm". The Economist. 22 June 2006. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
^ Ypsilanti, Dimitri; Plantin, Amy (1991). Telecommunications Equipment: Changing Markets and Trade Structures. OECD Publishing. p. 16. ISBN 9789264135536.
^ Asif, Saad (2018). 5G Mobile Communications: Concepts and Technologies. CRC Press. pp. 128–134. ISBN 9780429881343.
^ Colinge, Jean-Pierre; Greer, James C. (2016). Nanowire Transistors: Physics of Devices and Materials in One Dimension. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 9781107052406.
^ Asthana, Rajiv; Kumar, Ashok; Dahotre, Narendra B. (2006). Materials Processing and Manufacturing Science. Elsevier. p. 488. ISBN 9780080464886.
^ "Telecommunication equipment companies ranked by overall revenue in 2017 (in billion U.S. dollars)". Statista.com. Retrieved August 8, 2019.