As more details emerge from BT's 21st Century Network tender, I started making some back envelope calculations to see what the potential opportunity would be for several vendors.  The consensus estimate is that about 40% of the total $19 billion kitty is to be earmarked to equipment vendors (or about $8 billion), to be spent within a 6 year horizon.

So which vendors will be the ones that will be able to reap the most rewards?  Cisco, for one, should get a good portion of the core and metro routing piece, as it sells its products directly, rather than relying on a channel.  By contrast, Juniper has to go through two channels: Lucent (core) and Siemens (metro).  Cisco could get between $800 - $850 million of the total $1.4 billion part.

Lucent was the winner thus far in the professional services category, getting about $100 million in network services and network management software (for the Juniper routers).  As the migration from the legacy equipment installed base to the new IP continues, the company should be well positioned to get more professional services business, albeit it will get a good run for its money from Siemens.

Huawei gets a substantial piece ($1.5 billion) of the total CAPEX pie, although it was very aggressive on its pricing.  On the other hand, BT is a great reference account for the Chinese-based manufacturer.

Of the remaining vendors (Ciena, Alcatel, Ericsson), I would like to emphasize Ericsson in particular, since it was the winner of the VoIP / softswitching sweepstakes of 21CN RFP.  That particular portion of the contract is worth in the vicinity of $500 million.  The win by Ericsson also signals BT's intent to keep its wireless / MVNO options open.  This represents yet another instance of an incumbent vendor being able to leverage its position to win the next-gen piece.