100G and Beyond: ECOC 2012 Recap

ECOC 2012 is now over. It has been an interesting show with clearer market trends than ever:  100G is here and now. The industry is definitely getting ready for the next steps: 400G and 1TB. It has been the topics of several papers presented at the technical conference and we are starting to see products addressing those requirements on the show floor.

EXFO makes no exception and showcased its PSO-200 Optical Modulation Analyzer, which allows complete characterization of DP-QPSK or DP-16QAM signals up to 1 Tbit/s and beyond. The FTB-85100G CFP-based 100G Ethernet/OTN analyzer was also demonstrated at ECOC.

From a component and module perspective, several companies took advantage of the event to launch their new integrated receivers, coherent modules or 32 GBd modulators. Some of them even announced their second generation modules or instruments for 100G transmission.

The 100G market is definitely a multisupplier market now and competition should help reduce prices, which will facilitate customers’ acceptance and increase deployments in 2013.

I am definitely looking forward to ECOC 2013 in London to witness the market evolution over the months to come, as it went by really fast over the past 3 years.