Week In Research: Optical network equipment sales recover; Universal Service obligations getting second look globally

P-OTS hardware sales rise: The optical network equipment market is recovering globally--except in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Asia), where sales remain flat, Infonetics Research reports. Asia Pacific, particularly China, leads the spending drive for optical hardware, with sequential growth of 8.1 percent in the second quarter of 2010. Globally, equipment sales grew 2.9 percent to $3.05 billion from Q1 to Q2 2010. Among Packet Optical Transport Systems (P-OTS) vendors, Huawei continued its lead over Alcatel-Lucent, Fujitsu and Tellabs. News release.

USF in the spotlight: The controversy around reforming, or even getting rid of, the Universal Service Fund (USF) isn't isolated to the United States. In 2009 and 2010, Finland and New Zealand also proposed to revamp their Universal Service Obligations (USO) as they work on digital strategies for their countries, Research and Markets reports, and the EU has also proposed changes to its universal service directive. "Current policies and practices are already outdated when viewed in the light of technological developments and the dynamic broadband markets around the world," says a Research and Markets release.

Growing new ideas: The term "mashups" used to apply only to mixing up different musical tracks to create a new sound (and later, adding video to the recipe), but it's gaining popularity among telecommunications folks as a way to describe the integration of connectivity, data, applications and decision-making components to produce a better service or application. "Mashups are all about reusability, which is a magical word in any business context," Robert Rosenberg of Insight Research says. And, according to Insight Research, these technological mashups will generate over $1 billion in revenue for 2010 alone and grow 100 percent each year for the next five years. News release.

FTTH hits the big time: Operators who aren't buying next-generation equipment right now are certainly looking at their options, Infonetics Research says in two new reports, and Fiber to the Home (FTTH) is high on their lists--so vendors should take note, the analyst firm says. "When we recently surveyed global service providers about their FTTH deployment strategies, almost half said they are evaluating 10G GPON, and a small but significant number are already evaluating WDM PON, asymmetric 10G EPON, and symmetric 10G EPON," says Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and video. In a related survey, equipment vendors rating highest among operators included Alcatel-Lucent, Calix, Huawei, and Occam Networks. News release.

Infonetics FTTH technologies