BRC Survey Shows KPNQwest Winning 50% of VPN Bids in Europe, While AT&T And Infonet Lag.

Business Editors

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 30, 2001

KPNQwest is starting to win more network service contracts against global suppliers, according to the latest issue of an ongoing survey by BRC Consultancy Ltd, London.

In the last few months BRC sampled 70 bid attempts by major players and found KPN Qwest winning 50% of its bids, followed by WorldCom (43%) and Equant (32%). AT&T and Infonet were the poorest performers, winning only 11% and 8% of bid attempts respectively.

"This is the first time our survey has picked up KPNQwest making serious inroads in straight competition against the established global suppliers," says David McCron, Director of BRC. "We found that key KPNQwest strengths were flexibility and responsiveness to customer needs." AT&T and Infonet are the two suppliers who recently lost existing business to KPNQwest.

Amongst other findings, the survey shows customers opting more often for IP VPN rather than frame relay architecture, and the use of MPLS is beginning to feature in network procurement decisions. Customers see MPLS as being able to offer quality delivery of voice, video and data over a single platform. Equant's bidding performance seems to have been down during the period of integration with Global One, and Cable & Wireless sales also suffered as it underwent internal reorganization.

The BRC survey focuses on top European-based multinationals that evaluated competing proposals from suppliers of international managed data network services. For each bid situation, the BRC survey analyses why the winners won and the losers lost. One key area is price, and BRC has just finished the first issue of a separate study to track prices being charged.

BRC's survey Independent Analysis of Major Network Deals provides insight from major corporates that recently evaluated tenders for international network services, mainly involving IP VPN (Virtual Private Networks using the Internet Protocol), frame relay and Internet services. It assesses the buying process, customer requirements, customer evaluations of suppliers and selling capabilities of the above providers, and others such as BT Ignite, Cable & Wireless, Colt, Deutsche Telekom and Global Crossing. The separate pricing survey International IPVPN & Frame Relay Prices in Recent Network Deals tracks the prices being charged, using a combination of research and BRC analysis. Both surveys are available from BRC Consultancy Ltd, London.

Notes for editors

BRC Consultancy Ltd was founded in 1990. The company specializes in strategic marketing and application of mobile, Internet and data network services.