Report: 10 Gb/s Market to Surpass $3.2 B in 2008

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Nov. 24 -- The global market for 10 Gb/s systems will achieve an estimated market of $3.2 billion in sales in the year 2008, according to a study by CIR, an analyst firm based here.

After three years of poor industry performance, CIR said the market will stage a modest recovery in 2004 and enjoy stronger growth starting in 2005. Although the bulk of 10 Gb/s deployments will still be in the long haul throughout that period, the growth will come from the metro and especially the access and enterprise segments, according to the report.

CIR said 10 Gb/s closer is being deployed closer to customers for the following reasons: Bandwidth-hungry protocols ESCON (Enterprise Systems Connection), Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet are being more widely deployed and are supported over metro or regional areas, rather than nationally or internationally; broadband networks now require 10 Gb/s aggregation; and several million PCs and servers are already equipped with Gigabit Ethernet. This will stimulate the market for 10 Gb/s connectivity in both the wiring closet and in backbone applications, the report said.

CIR said although OC-192 SONET/SDH transport will remain the largest spending category over the forecast period, technologies such as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), 10 Gb/s Ethernet and 10 Gb/s asynchronous transfer mode will achieve more significant growth rates. CIR said it is also seeing a resurgence of interest in WDM in the corporate network/SAN segments, where WDM is becoming a mainstream solution. WDM is also continuing to be deployed at a healthy rate in submarine systems; further sustaining the DWDM market is Europe, which, CIR claims, has not cut spending on DWDM transport elements to the extent that US carriers have.

For more information about the report, "The Market at 10 Gb/s: A Value Chain Analysis," visit: www.cir-inc.com