With adequate bandwidth and network speeds now a cornerstone of life for both businesses and consumers, optical transport is increasingly becoming a key solution for network operators.
The market for optical network equipment is expected to reach $15 billion by 2018, according to research firm, Dell’Oro. Optical transport of the 100G variety is expected to make up 80 percent of that demand.
Communications Industry Researchers (CIR) also recently released a report predicting that the market for 400G will hit $528 million by 2019, and the market for supporting optical components and silicon devices will reach $195 million that year.
Clearly, optical networking matters. It is easy to see why when looking at the recent achievements of Alcatel-Lucent’s agile optical networking technologies.
Alcatel-Lucent has achieved real-world speeds of 1.4 Terabits per second (Tb/s) with spectral efficiency of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz (b/s/Hz) over a 410km stretch of live fiber in field trials with BT in the U.K.
Making it possible was the flexible grid infrastructure used by Alcatel-Lucent, along with its 400G Photonic Service Engine (PSE) technology on the 1830 Photonic Service Switch. It help achieved a 42.5 percent improvement in spectral efficiency, according to the company.
Türk Telekom in Turkey also has been showing the advantages of packet optical transport. The company recently broke the Guinness World Record for data transmission rate, reaching 8 Tb/s over a single fiber cable in a commercial network. They broke the record using 100G optical technology between Ankara and Istanbul.
From France to Russia, leading service providers also are moving toward optical network innovations by the company.
“The growing appetite for bandwidth hungry mobile devices and applications is driving tremendous demand throughout our network and taking this approach provides high-capacity with the flexibility and efficiency to serve our customers today and in the future,” noted Hassan Kabbani in a statement, CEO of Zain KSA in Saudi Arabia, which recently completed testing of ultra-broadband throughout the kingdom through the use of optical transport.
“It’s clear that with the rise in adoption of smartphones and the growing demand for high-bandwidth services in the cloud accessible across both fixed and mobile networks – operators are striving to increase capacity and speed, but they also want to protect their existing investments,” noted Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP routing and transport division. He said this is what agile optical networking is all about.
