Report: 40 Gbps DWDM in 1/3 of fiber optic networks by 2013

Networking and Telecommunications researchers The Dell'Oro Group published a report yesterday forecasting the next five years for DWDM in long haul fiber optic networks that expects the market for 40 Gbps wavelengths to grow by 50% every year. Short for Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, DWDM is an optical technology used to fit more traffic (thus making it "dense" with signals) on existing fiber optic backbones.

This week, General Cable Corp and Fujitsu won their bid for a 1,000 mile long haul submarine fiber optic cable project connecting the Indonesian islands of Kalimantan and Sulawesi. That project is scheduled for completion in mid-2010.

"While the near term outlook is for the total optical market to contract 9 percent due to factors such as the economic downturn, " Said Jimmy Yu, Director of Optical Transport research at Dell'Oro, "There continues to be an opportunity for technologies that will help service providers reduce their capital expense while still expanding their network capacity...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 Long Haul system."