Week in research: Optical transport slowed by legacy transition; core, edge routers poised for growth

OTN waits its turn: Legacy equipment put a damper on optical transport equipment sales last year, with the market segment declining 4 percent for the year. However, purchasing of SONET and SDH equipment also slowed significantly--dropping 30 percent in 2012. "Fortunately, optical network equipment continues to be needed even in soft economic times so long as consumers increase their use of high bandwidth access devices such as home broadband and smart phones," said Jimmy Yu, vice president of Optical Transport research at Dell'Oro Group. "The demand for more bandwidth has driven an increased need for WDM equipment, which continued a positive trajectory in the year; growing 8 percent." Huawei, ZTE and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) led optical transport equipment sales in 2012, holding over 50 percent of the market. Release

Dell'Oro Group 2012 optical transport equipment

Carriers prep for 100G: Sales of core routers in 2012 slowed more than sales of edge routers in the fourth quarter of 2012, a new report from Infonetics Research said, as carriers prepare for the move to 100G. However, the overall outlook for the carrier router and switch market worldwide in 2013 is a positive one. "We expect the service provider switch and router market to grow again in 2013," said Michael Howard, Infonetics co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks. "The U.S. economy is in better shape and we are predicting an increase in worldwide carrier capex this year." Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) remained in the top spot for router and carrier switch sales, with Huawei holding fast in second place. Alcatel-Lucent bumped Juniper (NYSE: JNPR) out of the number three spot. The full "Service Provider Routers and Switches" report will be published Monday, Feb. 25.  Release

Infonetics router and switch market 2012

Fiber overtakes cable broadband: FTTx saw its highest market gain ever in 2012, said Point Topic in a report issued on the first day of FTTH Conference Europe. Fiber deployments now account for 19.7 percent of the total broadband market, surpassing cable. Of the 54 million new broadband subscribers by 3Q of last year, 26 million, or 48 percent, are being served with fiber. "As the world gradually emerges from financial turmoil the continued growth of broadband has been a steady light in the storm," said Oliver Johnson, Point Topic CEO. "We won't see the triple digit growth of old but many markets are entering a phase of consolidation and consumer multi-service alignment." Release