The Open ROADM MSA adds new capabilities in Release 2.0

The Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) for open reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADM) group expects to publish its second release in the coming months. The latest MSA specifications extend optical reach by including line amplification and adds support for flexible grid and lower-speed tributaries with OTN switching.

Xavier PougnardThe Open ROADM MSA, set up by AT&T, Ciena, Fujitsu and Nokia, is promoting interoperability between vendors’ ROADMs by specifying open interfaces for their control using software-defined networking (SDN) technology. Now, one year on, the MSA has 10 members, equally split between operators and systems vendors.

Orange joined the Open ROADM MSA last July and says it shares AT&T’s view that optical networks lack openness given the proprietary features of the vendors’ systems.

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60-second interview with Infonetics' Andrew Schmitt

Market research firm Infonetics Research, now part of IHS Inc., has issued its 2014 summary of the global wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) equipment market. Andrew Schmitt, research director for carrier transport networking, in a Q&A with Gazettabyte.

Andrew Schmitt

Q: Infonetics claims the global WDM market grew 6% in 2014, to total US $10 billion. What accounted for such impressive growth in 2014?

AS: Primarily North American strength from data centre-related spending and growth in China.

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North American operators in an optical spending rethink

Optical transport spending by the North American operators dropped 13 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2014, according to market research firm Dell'Oro Group.

Operators are rethinking the optical vendors they buy equipment from as they consider their future networks. "Software-defined networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) - all the futuristic next network developments, operators are considering what that entails," says Jimmy Yu, vice president of optical transport research at Dell’Oro. "Those decisions have pushed out spending."

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Operators want to cut power by a fifth by 2020

Briefing: Green ICT

Part 2: Operators’ power efficiency strategies

Service providers have set themselves ambitious targets to reduce their energy consumption by a fifth by 2020. This despite the expected traffic they will carry being thirty times today’s volumes. Given the cost of electricity and operators’ requirements, such targets are not surprising: KPN, with its 12,000 sites in The Netherlands, consumes 1% of the country’s electricity.

 

“We also have to invest in capital expenditure for a big swap of equipment – in mobile and DSLAMs"

Philippe Tuzzolino, France Telecom-Orange

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AT&T domain suppliers

Date	Domain	Partners
Sept 2009	Wireline Access	Ericsson
Feb 2010	Radio Access Network	Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson
April 2010	Optical and transport equipment	Ciena
July 2010	IP/MPLS/Ethernet/Evolved Packet Core	Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper, Cisco

The table shows the selected players in AT&T's domain supplier programme announced to date.

AT&T has stated that there will likely be eight domain supplier categories overall so four more have still to be detailed.

Looking at the list, several thoughts arise:

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40 and 100Gbps: Growth assured yet uncertainty remains

Briefing: High-speed optical transmission.

Part 2: 40 and 100Gbps optical transmission

The market for 40 and 100 Gigabit-per-second optical transmission is set to grow over the next five years at a rate unmatched by any other optical networking segment.  Such growth may excite the industry but vendors have tough decisions to make as to how best to pursue the opportunity.

Market research firm Ovum forecasts that the wide area network (WAN) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) market for 40 and 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) linecards will have a 79% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) till 2014.

In turn, 40 and 100Gbps transponder volumes will grow even faster, at 100% CAGR till 2015, while revenues from 40 and 100Gbps transponder sale will have a 65% CAGR during the same period.

Yet with such rude growth comes uncertainty.

“We upgraded to 40Gbps because we believe – we are certain, in fact – that across the router and backbone it [40Gbps technology] is cheaper”

Jim King, AT&T Labs.

Systems, transponder and component vendors all have to decide what next-generation modulation schemes to pursue for 40Gbps to complement the now established differential phase-shift keying (DPSK). There are also questions regarding the cost of the different modulation options, while vendors must assess what impact 100Gbps will have on the 40Gbps market and when the 100Gbps market will take off.  

“What is clear to us is how muddled the picture is,” says Matt Traverso, senior manager, technical marketing at Opnext.

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Opnext's multiplexer IC plays its part in 100Gbps trial

AT&T’s 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) coherent trial between Louisiana and Florida detailed earlier this week was notable for several reasons. It included a mix of 10, 40 and 100Gbps wavelengths, Cisco Systems' newest IP core router, the CRS-3, and a 100Gbps line-side design from Opnext.

 

According to Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst of optical at Infonetics Research, what is significant about the 100Gbps AT&T trial is the real-time transmission; unlike previous 100Gbps trials no received data was block-captured and decoded offline.

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