The 100G Era has Arrived for Optical Technology

The 100G era is upon us whether service providers are ready or not.

“100G, it seems, has transitioned from being deeply entrenched in service providers’ minds, to being deeply entrenched in their networks,” wrote James Watt in an Alcatel-Lucent blog entry. “And anyone not already at the 100G party might as well stay home.”

With all the focus on wireless networks, the necessity of fixed network connections can be overlooked. Fixed networks still are the glue, however, Watt noted. So fast data interchange via 100G is necessary to keep pace with the growing data demand. This is why the 100G era could not have come too soon. “The time has come where it isn’t a dream in a research lab – but a real and working product and soon to be a network necessity,” Watt wrote.

Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) is well-situated for the 100G era of optical connections; in a recent Infonetics report, Alcatel-Lucent was listed as the clear leader in 40G/100G transmission technology, and a survey of service providers also showed that the company was most cited as the technology leader.

“This is very good news for Alcatel-Lucent, and it shows how our focus over the last two years in 100G is now paying off,” Watt wrote. “We have worked hard in the last two years to be one of the first vendors delivering leading edge 100G systems, drawing on both our long standing heritage in optical research and development and our vast understanding of communications networks.”

He added: “We also have the unique ability to put our finger on where the future is going as we look to our research arm, Bell Labs (News - Alert), who are actively inventing new techniques that will take us farther – faster.”

From where Watt sits, Alcatel-Lucent definitely is seeing tremendous momentum in the 100G segment. The company recently announced wins with Azteca, SK Broadband and a major central bid with China Telecom.

Competition is heating up in the 100G market, too. Currently 12 vendors are shipping 100G products, up from four as recently as January. The 100G market also has surpassed $400 million and is forecast to reach $4.6 billion by 2017, according to Watt.

“There are far fewer technical limitations for 100G as long as coherent technology is being used with PM-QPSK modulation,” added Eve Griliches (News - Alert) at TechTarget. “Most service providers will deploy 100G on fiber they've never used before and have been saving for higher bit rate deployments. Not all have that luxury, but many have saved their best fibers for exactly this time.”

 “The 100G era has arrived in a surprisingly fast manner and operators who don’t get on the speeding train will be left behind first by their competition – and in the end by their customers who expect nothing less than fast, flawless, uninterrupted, service,” Watt noted. In fact, if you are interested in more detail about 100G, read "Optimized 100G Transport: Selecting a 100G Optimized for Scalability, Performance and Cost."

Want to hear more about next generation communications?  Register now for ITEXPO Miami 2013: January 29-Feb 1, 2013 — Miami, Florida. Featuring collocated M2M Evolution, Channel Vision Expo, MSPWorld, Super WiFi (News - Alert), Cloud4SMB Expo, HTML5 Summit Conferences