Date: 16/05/2011

Survey highlights of OTN deployment strategies by service providers

Market research firm Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its OTN Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey, for which carriers in North America, Asia Pacific, EMEA, and CALA were interviewed about their plans for optical transport networks.

The survey highlights shared by the Infonetics are:

74% of respondent service providers plan to eventually deploy electrical ODU (optical data unit) switching
71% of the carriers interviewed have deployed or will deploy ODU-2/1/0 switching in the core and the metro by the end of 2011
By 2014, 40G and 100G ODU switching will each be prevalent in over half of all metro networks
The traditional service multiplexing features of OTN are by far the most important in the eyes of carriers
52% of metro optical ports support OTN, but only a fraction are enabled and transmitting using this protocol

"All of the carriers we interviewed for our OTN survey have deployed OTN interfaces in transport applications, and based on conversations aside from this survey, we know very few major carriers in general will 'skip' OTN. There is a huge shift between now and 2014 in the area of optical switching, with the number of carriers with plans to deploy OTN interfaces on electrical switching equipment rising from 37% to 84%," notes Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.