Abstract

Incumbent carriers have focused on returning to profitability while navigating through the recent economic down turn. In order to better align with the current economic recovery, service providers are now focusing on integrating various transport functions and converging data, video and transport services on single transport platform. Analyst studies have concluded that to meet an ROIC of 12%, the typical service provider needs to achieve 30% year-overyear capital savings. More importantly, operations costs need to achieve the same high-water mark in terms of savings. Recent advances in silicon integration, third generation SONET/SDH technologies (GFP/VCAT/LCAS), and innovations in optical systems are contributing to achieve these goals.

© 2005 Optical Society of America