Cisco has said its proposed participation in the Chinese city's project was to provide routing andswitchingequipment, not cameras or video-surveillance software.
After building its business on making switchingequipment that forms the backbone of phone and computer networks, Huawei is trying to become a business and consumer brand.
Roth counters that the deal catapults Nortel ahead of its chief competitors -- number one phone equipment maker Lucent Technologies, and Cisco Systems, the largest Internet switching gear manufacturer.