It is hard not to notice the flurry of service provider activity in 40G/100G optical networking lately, a trend that Infonetics Research believes is an "unstoppable" force.
In its new "40G/100G Wavelength Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey," the research firm interviewed 21 incumbent, competitive, and mobile operators that have set 40G and/or 100G wavelengths to be either installed or planned for installation by 2013.
Spanning the North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, and CALA regions, the respondents represented 28 percent of the total worldwide telecom carrier revenue and capex.
Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical at Infonetics Research and author of the survey, said service providers are interested in using 100G transport in brownfield and greenfield network environments. "Carriers plan to use both 40G and 100G to the same degree in existing brownfield networks, and clearly favor 100G for new greenfield builds," he said.
Over the past year, there have been a number of 100G network announcements from a number of U.S.-based, Canadian and European incumbent and competitive carriers.
One of the most aggressive carriers in the 100G domain is Verizon (NYSE: VZ), which updated seven additional routes to 100G on its IP network last fall in addition to upgrading 10 of its network routes with coherent optical technology.
But Verizon is not the only game in the 100G optical town. A group of savvy competitive carriers in the U.S. (Lightower and the city of Washington, D.C.), Canada (MTS Allstream and Shaw), Europe (BSkyB, BT, and P&T Luxembourg), and R&E networks (Internet2), also lit 100G capabilities on their respective fiber networks.
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Related articles:
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Lightower lights up commercial 40G and 100G services
BSkyB adds 100G capabilities to its optical transmission network
France Telecom injects Alcatel-Lucent's 100G optical system into key network routes