REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Aug. 5 -- A market analysis firm has revised its forecast for the optical transport equipment market, predicting growth to $7.8 billion by 2008 -- 6 percent higher than in an earlier report. According to the Dell'Oro Group, which focuses on the networking and telecommunications industries, metro applications of optical transport equipment will lead the optical market into a recovery. Sales into metro applications are expected to grow from $3.9 billion in 2003 to $4.9 billion in 2008. "The majority of the growth in metro applications will occur in 2004 and 2005 as service providers focus on delivering new services, such as broadband and video to the residential market and Ethernet services to the enterprise market," said Jimmy Yu, senior analyst of optical transport equipment at Dell'Oro Group. "Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) mMetro will be one of the principal mechanisms to deliver these high-bandwidth services, and we are predicting 73 percent growth for the worldwide DWDM metro market between 2003 and 2008." Yu said reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) will enable service providers to use DWDM equipment in their metro infrastructure, since these products allow remote reconfiguration of DWDM networks. In its new "Optical Transport 5-Year Forecast Report," the Dell'Oro Group says the SONET/SDH multiservice and optical switch markets will also have strong growth potential driven by the increased demand in metro applications. The report also indicates increased activity around DWDM ultralong haul and 40-Gb/s port speeds. For more information, visit: www.delloro.com