Report: DWDM metro drives growth in optical transport market

May 19, 2005 Redwood City, CA -- The total optical transport equipment market grew 18% over a period of a year ago, with the most significant growth occurring in the DWDM metro segment, says a report from the Dell'Oro Group. According to the report, DWDM metro revenue grew 56% compared to a year ago, and 4% sequentially, with 10-Gbit/sec port shipments seeing exceptional growth, at 30% sequentially.

"Telecom service providers have stepped up deployments of DWDM metro," says Jimmy Yu, senior analyst for optical transport research at the Dell'Oro Group. "Until recently, DWDM metro growth was driven by enterprises' need for data recovery - now we're seeing growth driven by telecom service providers' need for capacity."

According to the report, for the first quarter of 2005, revenue for global DWDM metro equipment sales totaled $270 million. Market leaders included Nortel, which saw 17% year-to-year growth in revenue; Fujitsu, which saw 189% growth; Cisco, which saw 61% growth, and Adva, which saw 49% growth.

"We believe that service providers are installing DWDM Metro equipment ahead of perceived bandwidth demand on their metro networks," concludes Yu.

The report, "The Dell'Oro Group Optical Transport Quarterly Report," provides in-depth coverage of the optical transport equipment market with tables covering manufacturers' revenue, average selling prices, unit shipments per tributary/line or wavelength shipments (by speed: OC-3/STM-1; OC-12/STM-4; OC-48/STM-16; OC-192/STM-64; OC-768/STM-256; and Other). The report tracks DWDM long haul terrestrial, DWDM metro, SONET/SDH ADM, SONET/SDH multiservice, and optical switch equipment.