DWDM growth - dense wavelength division multiplexing - Industry Trend or Event

Communications News, August, 1999

According to KMI Corp., bandwidth demand will increase the worldwide market for DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) to $9.4 billion by 2004. KMI's study indicates that systems vendors are looking toward deployment of DWDM in metropolitan-area networks by CLECs and ILECs. New lower-cost products and software solutions to help local carriers manage legacy systems will lead to broader adoption of DWDM over the next few years. By 2004, short-distance DWDM systems will account for a third of systems deployed, up from 5% of the market in 1998.

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Regionally, Europe and Asia are accelerating DWDM deployment. The trend toward transmitting data directly over DWDM has shifted toward open transponder configurations, rather than closed systems integrated with SONET equipment. A fast-growing part of the market will be laser retrofits to previously installed systems.