Optical transport sector enjoys robust Q3; Ciena and Huawei post largest market share gains—report

The demand for network capacity continued unabated in the recent third quarter, which continued to benefited the optical transport equipment sector. A report by Dell'Oro Group estimated that that wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) revenue grew 3% year-over-year in Q3. The amount of capacity shipped on WDM equipment grew above 30% year-over-year, which led to the increase in Q3 revenues.

"Once again, disaggregated WDM systems shined the brightest, continuing to grow year-over-year for a sixteenth consecutive quarter," said Jimmy Yu, vice president at Dell’Oro Group. "In Q3 2019, it grew 28%, reaching an annualized revenue of $1.4 billion,”

Ciena and Huawei posted the largest market share gains in the quarter while the Asia Pacific region was the only one to have reported a decline. The latest report also found that the market is making a move towards 200-plus Gbps wavelengths, which is causing a slowdown in demand for 100 Gbps wavelengths.

RELATED: Ciena, Internet2 and Juniper boot up 400GE long haul link between Chicago and Denver

There's also movement on the 400 Gbps front. Last week Ciena it was one of the vendors that helped enable AT&T's 400-gigabit optical connection that is carrying live traffic between Dallas and Atlanta.

Ciena, Internet2 and Juniper Networks also announced they had provisioned live traffic over a 1,367-mile circuit using a single 400-gigabit Ethernet link.