Categories
Brands
Ordering Guide
News
Certificates 
Login
Bestsellers
Featured
Optical transceivers: Pouring a quart into a pint pot
Optical equipment and transceiver makers have much in common. Both must contend with the challenge of yearly network traffic growth and both are addressing the issue similarly: using faster interfaces, reducing power consumption and making designs more compact and flexible.
Yet if equipment makers and transceiver vendors share common technical goals, the market challenges they face differ. For optical transceiver vendors, the challenges are particularly complex. LightCounting's global optical transceiver sales forecast. In 2009 the market was $2.10bn and will rise to $3.42bn in 2013. Transceiver vendors have little scope for product differentiation. That’s because the interfaces are based on standard form factors defined using multi-source agreements (MSAs).
System vendors may welcome MSAs since it increases their choice of suppliers but for transceiver vendors it means fierce competition, even for new opportunities such as 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 40 and 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) long-haul transmission. Transceiver vendors must also contend with 40Gbps overlapping with the emerging 100Gbps market. Vendors must choose which interface options to back with their hard-earned cash.
Some industry observers even question the 40 and 100Gbps market opportunities given the continual cost reduction and simplicity of 10Gbps transceivers. One is Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of optical transceiver market research firm, LightCounting.
“The argument heard is that 40Gbps will take over the world in two or three years’ time,” says Kozlov. Yet he has been hearing the same claim for over a decade: “Look at the relative prices of 40Gbps and 10Gbps a decade ago and look at it now – 10Gbps is miles ahead.”
In Kozlov’s view, while 40Gbps and 100Gbps are being adopted in the network, the vast majority of networks will not see such rates. Instead traffic growth will be met with additional 10Gbps wavelengths and where necessary more fibre.
