Telecommunications Equipment

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.

Smartphones are one of the most popular telecoms equipment.

Telecommunications equipment can be broadly broken down into the following categories:

• 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

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, microprocessors, memory chips, and telecommunication circuits. As of 2005, telecommunications equipment account for 16.5% of the annual microprocessor market.

The world's largest telecommunications equipment vendors by revenues in 2017 are:

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

• Networking hardware
• List of networking hardware vendors
• List of telephone switches
• Network equipment provider