The market for DSL customer premises equipment in 4Q 2001 dropped 3 percent to $458.7 million versus the previous period, said the Dell'Oro Group, in a recent study.

The figure is tied to sales of DSL modems, data-only routers and voice-and-data routers.

"Unit shipments were actually up sequentially," said Dell'Oro Group Industry Analyst Paul Baranello. "The DSL CPE market is a highly competitive market, and vendors cut [equipment prices] in 4Q '01 to maintain share."

According to Dell'Oro, Siemens led all DSL CPE vendors in revenue, followed by Alcatel (which sold its DSL CPE unit to Thomson last year), Westell, Cisco and Sumitomo.