100G is not far away, say carriers: Survey

CAMPBELL, USA: In a new study, '40G/100G Wavelength Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey', market researcher Infonetics Research finds that most respondents have indicated 40G is only a short-term solution and will move the majority of installations to 100G once those products reach widespread availability.

The top three reasons operators are deploying higher-speed 40G/100G optical transport equipment are to lower the cost per bit for new wavelengths, the superior dispersion performance of coherent optics, and to lower incremental common equipment costs as a result of increased spectral efficiency, it added.

Also Read: 10G EPON ready but demand is weak: Ovum

Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical at Infonetics Research and author of the survey, said: "To take measure of the coming optical reboot, we significantly changed the focus of our latest 40G/100G survey from previous years, and aimed to gain insight into the trends and differences in deployment in existing brownfield networks versus new greenfield builds."

The decline of 10G will begin as greenfield regional and long-haul networks shift to all-coherent architectures that lack dispersion compensation.

"Carriers plan to use both 40G and 100G to the same degree in existing brownfield networks, and clearly favor 100G for new greenfield builds. 100G looks unstoppable. We discovered that there is a strong carrier preference for 100G transport in both brownfield and greenfield installations," he added.

Non-coherent 100G isn't yet viewed as an important technology. Colourless and directionless ROADMs and OTN switching are important components of greenfield builds; gridless and contentionless ROADMs much less so.