OTN Transport and Switching Equipment Market Grew Eight Percent in 2012

By Rajani Baburajan, TMCnet Contributor

A recent research report from Infonetics (News - Alert) finds that overall the optical transport hardware market floundered in 2012, but the OTN transport and switching equipment market grew eight percent in 2012, to $7.3 billion.

Among the segments that contributed for the largest growth, the Optical Transport Network (OTN) division led the way with 46 percent growth in 2012 from 2011. Further, Packet-optical transport equipment sales rose seven percent in 2012, to $1.2 billion, according to Infonetics’ OTN and Packet Optical Hardware report.

"OTN spending, and particularly OTN switching, is benefiting from a rise in investment in coherent core networks," says Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research (News - Alert), in a statement.

Service providers that roll out 100G are simultaneously upgrading their optical switching infrastructure. In fact, there is an increasing shift from legacy SONET/SDH to packet-optical transport systems that combine optical and Ethernet circuit switching in the same chassis.

Geographically North America represents the biggest market for OTN gear overall, while China leads in OTN switching deployments.

Infonetics expects to see the momentum continue this year for the OTN and packet-optical transport systems. The research firm expects the OTN equipment market to top $13 billion in 2017.

Among the OTN vendors, Infinera (News - Alert) was the most successful in OTN switching in North America, despite only recognizing revenue in the last six months of the year. Meanwhile Tellabs and Fujitsu (News - Alert) tied for the top market share position in the packet-transport front, thanks to their success with Verizon. The rest of the top 5 include Ciena, Cisco, and Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert).

Infinera recently launched its FastSMP network protection solution. The solution is expected to enable higher network resiliency with protection against multiple failures for service providers cost effectively.

In another recent development in the industry, Ciena has been selected by Ritter Communications, an Arkansas-based communications provider, to enable the delivery of advanced Ethernet service in the region.

Ciena’s fiber optic platforms help Ritter ensure more accurate service management and fault isolation across a greater number of services. And its 6500 Packet-Optical Platform will help Ritter scale capacity and program its network to deliver 10G and 40G wavelength services today, with the ability to scale to 100G in the future, company officials added.

Related Network Packet Broker Articles