The second quarter of 2007 was the best quarter for IPOs since the peak of dot-com mania in 2000, and some of the biggest contributors were telecom and networking companies.

Overall, 22 venture-financed companies raised $2.73 billion in IPOs last quarter, more than double the amount of money raised a year ago, according to the Quarterly Liquidity Report from Dow Jones VentureOne. This represents the most amount of money raised via IPOs since the third quarter of 2000.

So far this year, $3.93 billion was raised through venture-backed IPOs which is more than the total amount of money raised through IPOs in 2006.

The largest deal of the quarter was the $862.5 million IPO for MetroPCS, a Dallas carrier that provides wireless services to 3 million subscribers in seven major U.S. metropolitan areas.

Other IPOs in the telecom and networking space were:

* AuthenTec, a Melbourne, Fla., maker of biometric scanning devices for PCs, laptops and other wireless devices.

* Cavium Networks, a Mountain View, Calif., maker of integrated circuits used in routers, gateways, appliances and other network devices.

* Data Domain, a Santa Clara provider of enterprise data backup and storage systems.

* Infinera, a Sunnyvale, Calif., provider of digital optical backbone equipment for carriers.

* Starent Networks, Tewksbury, Mass., provider of hardware and software for wireless carriers that supports multimedia applications.

* Veraz Networks, a San Jose provider of VoIP equipment and software for service providers.

Meanwhile, merger and acquisition activity declined during the quarter as more venture capitalists chose IPOs as their preferred exit strategies, the report said.

The report found that 81 companies completed mergers and acquisitions during the last quarter for a total of $7.5 billion. This is down from the 110 M&A deals completed in the same quarter a year ago, and represented the lowest amount of M&A activity since 2003.

"More venture-backed technology companies are opting to take advantage of the favorable IPO market and compensating for the slight downturn in the number of overall mergers and acquisitions, which had been the most common path to liquidity for several years," said Jessica Canning, director of global research for Dow Jones VentureOne in a statement.

The largest venture-based acquisition of the quarter was Microsoft’s $800 million purchase of Tellme Networks, a mobile search provider based in Mountain View, Calif.