40G/100G Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey from Infonetics

[marketwire] As part of its Continuous Research Service (CRS) series of service provider surveys, Infonetics Research this week published 40G/100G Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey.

Infonetics analysts Michael Howard and Andrew Schmitt surveyed telecom operators that represent 26% of the world's telecom capital expenditures and 25% of the world's telecom revenue about:

-- Their plans for deploying 40G and 100G technology
-- The applications they are targeting for this technology
-- The pricing inflection points that will result in adoption of higher speed technology

"The most notable feedback was the widespread interest in deploying 40G and 100G once cost-per-bit improvements of only 20% are reached, because the network simplification these technologies offer is worth the price. The widely accepted 'four times the capacity at two-and-a-half-times the cost of the previous generation' maxim isn't reflected in carrier responses here. Moving from 10G to 40G/100G is a different story, though; 10G prices are so low now that it will remain a tough opponent for some time," notes Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.

"Router manufacturers will be happy to know that 83% of the service providers we surveyed plan to use 40G for router-to-WDM connections by 2012, and 84% will do the same for 100G at some point," adds Michael Howard, Infonetics Research's co-founder and principal analyst for carrier and data center networks.

All of Infonetics' survey respondent operators have deployed optical transport networks and have either deployed or evaluated 40G and 100G optical transport equipment, and all survey respondents are knowledgeable purchase decision-makers for optical networking equipment.

The service providers participating in the survey are a mix of incumbent (58%), competitive (25%) and wireless (17%) operators; 50% are based in North America, 25% in EMEA, and 25% in Asia Pacific.

Infonetics Research: 40G vs. 100G optical technology battle will be decided by cost; 10G remains tough competitor