Japan's NEC, Hitachi to tie up on next-generation Internet routers: report

TOKYO (AFP) Dec 17, 2003
Japanese electronics makers NEC Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. plan to jointly develop, and then market, next-generation routers, devices that control data traffic on the Internet, by the end of 2006, a report said Wednesday.

Each firm will pitch in five billion yen (46.7 million dollars), while the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will contribute 10 billion yen toward development costs, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

The three could forge a joint venture to develop the devices, which have come to play a central role in telecoms infrastructure, it said.

The government's participation is in line with its plan to boost the competitiveness of domestic telecoms equipment makers in the global market, the paper said.

Japanese companies share of the global market for routers is less than five percent, far behind dominant leaders Cisco Systems Inc. of the United States and Nortel Networks Corp. of Canada, it said.

Demand for next-generation routers with transmission speeds of 300 Gigabits per second is expected to surge around 2006 in Japan and a few years later overseas, the paper said.

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