VHDL-based behavioral synthesis is appearing on the market but it still has to prove that it can have a significant impact. In the past, most applications for behavioral synthesis came from the DSP area and from the academic world. In contrast, this paper describes the results of an investigation we carried out on recent designs of Alcatel-Bell, leading to a more detailed study of 5 industrial telecom non-DSP circuits, that were suitable for behavioral synthesis.Our conclusion is that there is distinctly a market potential. However, we experienced that efficient use for telecom non-DSP circuits requires functionality that goes beyond simply generating an RTL-synthesizable description. This functionality is also discussed.