When Nortel sells add’l equipment on a CS2000, even if it’s TDM interfaces for trunking, I suspect it books the revenue as softswitch revenue. With a big installed base, and a history of large customers, Nortel will continue to book big VoIP revenues on any systems they label “softswitch”. As an example, big systems used as tandems will have lots of revenue but not much in the way of end-user licenses.

MetaSwitch is working its way into those bigger carriers but does not (yet) have the huge installed base. I suspect that a lot of their revenue is from new system sales at the class five level with a significant number of subscriber licenses.

We can always re-define “winner”.

Revenues tell us more about how much customers are paying for their old decisions. I’d like to know how these two firms are doing as customers make new decisions.