40 and 100Gbps: Growth assured yet uncertainty remains
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 5:25PM Briefing: High-speed optical transmission.
Part 2: 40 and 100Gbps optical transmission
The market for 40 and 100 Gigabit-per-second optical transmission is set to grow over the next five years at a rate unmatched by any other optical networking segment. Such growth may excite the industry but vendors have tough decisions to make as to how best to pursue the opportunity.
Market research firm Ovum forecasts that the wide area network (WAN) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) market for 40 and 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) linecards will have a 79% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) till 2014.
In turn, 40 and 100Gbps transponder volumes will grow even faster, at 100% CAGR till 2015, while revenues from 40 and 100Gbps transponder sale will have a 65% CAGR during the same period.
Yet with such rude growth comes uncertainty.
“We upgraded to 40Gbps because we believe – we are certain, in fact – that across the router and backbone it [40Gbps technology] is cheaper”
Jim King, AT&T Labs.
Systems, transponder and component vendors all have to decide what next-generation modulation schemes to pursue for 40Gbps to complement the now established differential phase-shift keying (DPSK). There are also questions regarding the cost of the different modulation options, while vendors must assess what impact 100Gbps will have on the 40Gbps market and when the 100Gbps market will take off.
“What is clear to us is how muddled the picture is,” says Matt Traverso, senior manager, technical marketing at Opnext.
