40 Gbps Optical Shipments Stall

Stalled by the current slow economy, shipments of 40-Gbps optical transport technology are expected to drop 9% this year, according to a report released Thursday.

The Dell'Oro Group said, however, that it expects the 40-Gbps optical market to resume its growth in 2010. The market research firm forecast that shipments will reach $14.5 billion for 40-Gbps optical transport in 2013.

"The economy of most major countries is in a recession," said Jimmy Yu, director of optical transport research at the Dell'Oro Group, in a statement. "While the near-term outlook is for the total optical market to contract 9% due to factors such as the economic downturn, there continues to be an opportunity for technologies that will help service providers reduce their capital expense while still expanding their network capacity."

Yu added: "We think that 40 Gigabit is one of those technologies as the price per bit of a 40 Gbps wavelength starts to be lower than that of a 10 Gigabit wavelength in a DWDM [dense wavelength division multiplexing] Long Haul system" will cause sales to pick up.

The market research firm predicted that 40-Gbps wavelength shipments should grow at least 50% in each of the next five years and contribute nearly one-third of the capacity shipped in DWDM Long Haul systems by 2013.

Dell'Oro also forecast that shipments of 100-Gbps wavelengths should arrive in late 2011.

Telecommunications carriers like Verizon Communications and AT&T have been deploying 40-Gbps backbone network circuits in recent months.