November 10, 2004 – Equant (NYSE: ENT) (Euronext Paris: EQU) maintains its position as a leader in Gartner Inc.’s annual Asia-Pacific Network Service Providers Magic Quadrant.
To Chee Eng, principal analyst, and Kobita Desai, principal analyst, at Gartner, authored the Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Network Service Providers, Asia/Pacific, 2004.” The objective of this Magic Quadrant is to evaluate NSPs that provide international telecom services to multinational corporations in Asia-Pacific.
According to Gartner, vendors listed in the leader quadrant are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.
Equant was evaluated on its “Ability to Execute” and “Completeness of Vision,” which reflect the following criteria:
- Ability to Execute: service portfolio and coverage, client relationship (support, service and quality), “mind share” and market share, pricing and corporate viability.
- Completeness of Vision: product strategy, marketing and sales strategy, business and financial strategy, technology strategy and operational strategy.
According to Gartner, Equant continues to have a distinct lead in geographic coverage, including extensive coverage in China and India which are two of the most important markets in Asia-Pacific. Equant is the only provider that can extend seamless services deep into China, using a domestic network built by China Netcom for Equant’s exclusive use. In India, Equant connects to all major cities, with extensive domestic reach originally built for the air transport community. Gartner also indicates that Equant connects more enterprises to China and India than most other carriers and is showing improvement in local support capabilities, especially for very large and distributed networks.
“It is an honor to be placed, once again, in the Leaders quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Asia-Pacific network service providers,” said David Nishball, Equant’s senior vice president for the Asia-Pacific region. “Equant’s leadership position in Asia‑Pacific exemplifies our objective to satisfy the evolving needs of multinational corporations in Asia-Pacific, particularly in the emerging markets of China and India.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Equant
Equant (NYSE: ENT) (Euronext Paris: EQU) is a recognized industry leader in global communications infrastructure services for multinational businesses. Equant combines its network expertise – including unmatched seamless network reach in 220 countries and territories and local support in approximately 165 countries – with its expanded services capabilities to provide global, integrated and customized communication services to enable its customers key business processes. Equant serves thousands of the world’s top companies, with the industry’s most extensive portfolio of communications services and network solutions, including the market-leading IP VPN used by nearly 1,300 global businesses. Equant, a subsidiary of France Telecom, consistently leads industry surveys in corporate user satisfaction.
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted September 2004 by Gartner Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.