OTDRs for remote fiber testing and monitoring valued at $230.6 million by 2021: ElectroniCast

ElectroniCast Consultants predicts in a newly released report that worldwide use of optical time domain reflectometers (OTDRs) both continuous and periodic remote monitoring of fiber-optic lines will be worth $230.6 million by 2021. Such OTDRs will come in a variety of shapes and sizes, the market research firm adds.

The report covers a wide range of OTDRs, including rack/bench-top, portable, and mini/micro OTDRs embedded into small form factor pluggable (SFP) optical transceivers (see, for example, "NeoPhotonics offers PON OLT optical transceivers with embedded OTDR functions"). This last category will come to dominate the market, ElectroniCast believes.

"Critical-use/high data-rate optical fiber links are increasing to meet huge bandwidth demands, increasing the number of links at an explosive growth rate," explains Stephen Montgomery, director of the fiber optic component group at ElectroniCast. "The demand to add more bandwidth capability in a smaller space (smaller footprint), along with improving service-level agreement (SLA) pressures, are just a few of the many strong selling points for the use of embedded OTDR/SFP transceivers."

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