Faced with an ever-growing appetite from consumers and businesses for high bandwidth applications like video and cloud services, service providers are moving to upgrade their optical backbone networks to 100G.
The second half of 2011 was quite active with a number of domestic U.S. and international carriers in Asia Pacific and Europe upgrading parts of their network to 100G optical technology.
What's made the transition to 100G easier for service providers is the reemergence of coherent optics, a technique that increases signal distance while reducing the need for amplification has helped give 100G a boost in the eyes of providers.
A recent Infonetics survey of 21 incumbent, competitive, and mobile operators have 40G and/or 100G wavelengths to be either installed or planned for installation by 2013. A number of these service providers are interested in using 100G transport in Brownfield and Greenfield network environments, adding that many of them clearly favor 100G for new Greenfield builds.
This week FierceTelecom takes a look at the service providers that are in the process of incorporating 100G optical into their networks. Read more...