Date: 19/12/2012

Infonetics: 100G to rise from 5% of deployed wavelengths in 2012 to 37% in 2015

Market research firm Infonetics Research has forecasted 100G will rise from just 5% of deployed wavelengths in 2012 to 37% in 2015.

“The debate between 40G and 100G in WDM networks is over, so for our latest 40G/100G and ROADM deployment strategies survey we focused on identifying how the rollout of 100G will take place and to what degree networks will migrate to coherent technology and ROADMs," explains Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research. “What we found is that operators participating in our study expect coherent 100G to take over most core networks by 2015 and even make some minor inroads into the metro, while ROADM.”

Research highlights:
Among survey respondents, by 2015 coherent wavelengths will account for 68% of deployments in the core and 29% in the metro.
Carriers have mixed opinions on the future of various metro 100G approaches, including direct detect 100G, pluggable coherent, and advanced modulations such as 16-QAM.
ROADMs are now a major part of optical networks, with ROADM nodes and degree counts set to surge by a factor of more than 2.