WDM gear sales finally move ahead of SONET

About 12 years ago this spring, as the industry was talking about the big news of from the U.S. telecom industry's biggest trade show (Supercomm 1996), a lot of it had to do with wavelength division multiplexing technology. WDM was the next big thing in network transport technology, and looked to be the sure successor to synchronous optical networking (SONET) technology. The only question (well, maybe one of very few questions) about WDM's bright future was, how long before it over-takes SONET in telco networks? Considering the lengthy lifetimes that telcos squeezed out of their gear, it was a very good question.

We still do not have a direct answer to that question, but what we do know, thanks to a recent Dell'Oro Group study, is that sales of WDM gear just moved ahead of sales of SONET gear for the very first time. So, if you had 1998 in the WDM-beats-SONET pool, you were way wrong ...

For more:
- check out this press release from Dell'Oro

Related articles:
Verizon eyes evolution to WDM-PON FierceIPTV report
Here's a bunch more WDM news: WDM report