Space-division multiplexing: the final frontier

System vendors continue to trumpet their achievements in long-haul optical transmission speeds and overall data carried over fibre. 

Alcatel-Lucent announced earlier this month that France Telecom-Orange is using the industry's first 400 Gigabit link, connecting Paris and Lyon, while Infinera has detailed a trial demonstrating 8 Terabit-per-second (Tbps) of capacity over 1,175km and using 500 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) super-channels. 

"Integration always comes at the cost of crosstalk"

Peter Winzer, Bell Labs

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Alcatel-Lucent demos dual-carrier Terabit transmission

"Without [photonic] integration you are doubling up your expensive opto-electronic components which doesn't scale"

Peter Winzer, Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs

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The role of software-defined networking for telcos

The OIF's Carrier Working Group is assessing how software-defined networking (SDN) will impact transport. Hans-Martin Foisel, chair of the OIF working group, explains SDN's  importance for operators.

Briefing: Software-defined networking

Part 1: Operator interest in SDN

"Using SDN use cases, we are trying to derive whether the transport network is ready or if there is some missing functionality"

Hans-Martin Foisel, OIF

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Cisco Systems' intelligent light

Network optimisation continues to exercise operators and content service providers as their requirements evolve with the growth of services such as cloud computing. Cisco Systems' announced elastic core architecture aims to tackle  networking efficiency and address particular service provider requirements.

“The core [network] needs to be more robust, agile and programmable”

Sultan Dawood, Cisco

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Optical transport to grow at a 10% CAGR through 2017

• Global optical transport market to reach US $13bn in 2017
• 100 Gigabit to grow at a 75% CAGR

"I won't be surprised if it [100 Gig] grows even faster"

Jimmy Yu, Dell'Oro Group

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Achieving 56 Gigabit VCSELs

A Q&A with Finisar's Jim Tatum, director of new product development. Tatum talks about the merits of the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and the challenges to get VCSELs to work at 56 Gigabit.

Briefing: VCSELs

VCSELs galore! A wafer of 28 Gig devices Source: Finisar

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Optical transceiver market to grow 50 percent by 2017

• The optical transceiver market will grow to US $5.1bn in 2017
• The fierce price declines of 2012 will lessen during the forecast period
• Stronger traffic growth could have a significant positive effect on transceiver market growth

"The price declines in 2012 were brutal but they will not happen again [during the forecast period]"

Vladimir Kozlov, LightCounting

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