Optical fibre connections have grown 35 per cent in the last quarter alone

Optical fibre technology is finally starting to make significant inroads into the broadband space worldwide, at the expense of DSL, according to a market report by telecoms analyst house Ovum.

The report says that optical fibre broadband connections worldwide have grown 35 per cent in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the last quarter of 2010, while DSL terminations have dropped five per cent.

Fibre optical connections are free from the interference that commonly plagues copper wires that are used for DSL, making them capable of far higher speeds.

The report states that optical connections reached a total of 988,889 ports, which represents a growth of 182 per cent over the first quarter of 2010. Ovum found that that the Asia Pacific region has the greatest appetite for optical connections with 93 per cent of this growth coming from that region. Chinese infrastructure vendors have been the beneficiaries here, pushing Huawei, ZTE and FiberHome into the top three spots for PON (passive optical network) OLT (optical line terminal) ports. Other regions such as Europe, Middle East and Africa and South and Central America also reached their highest levels ever for fibre.

By contrast, the report noted that the growth for DSL lines, the defacto standard for broadband internet connections, slowed or turned to negative figures in some countries, due to the rise in Fibre to the Home (FTTH) or Fibre to the Building (FTTB).

Generally, though, internet connections worldwide are on the increase and author of the report Kamalini Ganguly said in a statement, “despite the sequential drop in the first quarter of 2011, year-on-year (YoY) shipments were higher in all regions, many supported by upgrades related to FTTN and FTTB rollouts. In fact, the first quarter of 2011 was another record quarter for VDSL2 (very high-speed digital subscriber line 2) shipments, which crested to 4.8 million ports.”

For VDSL Alcatel-Lucent currently leads the VDSL/VDSL2 market with 42 per cent market share, followed by Huawei with 22 per cent, and Ericsson with eight per cent.

The Broadband World Forum will  take place on 27th-29th September at the CNIT, La Defense, Paris, France.

The deployment of the 40 Gb IP/MPLS backbone network will allow MegaFon to optimize the existing core network and extend the service range of its subscribers with 3G data services.

Nortel delays optical network and Carrier Ethernet auction

Canadian vendor Nortel has delayed the next stage of its fire sale until later this week, giving potential bidders for its Optical Networking and Carrier Ethernet businesses and extra few days to get bids together.

The auction was previously scheduled to take place last week, but will now take place on Tuesday of this week.

This development suggests that carrier network specialist Ciena, which forged an agreement with Nortel to acquire the exiting firm’s optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets in October, has some competition.

The assets are owned by Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business and include the firm’s long-haul optical transport portfolio, metro optical Ethernet switching and transport solutions, Ethernet transport, aggregation and switching technology, multiservice SONET/SDH product families, and network management software products.

Alcatel-Lucent loss widens in third quarter

Joint venture infrastructure firm Alcatel-Lucent said Friday that net loss for the third quarter of 2009 widened to €182m, compared to a loss of €40m in the same period in 2008.

Revenues also fell from just over €4bn in the third quarter of 2008 to €3.7bn in the same period 2009, driven by a shortfall in carrier infrastructure sales, particularly 2G wireless access.

For the third quarter 2009, revenues for the Carrier segment were €2.23bn, a decrease of 14.6 per cent compared to €2.6bn in the year-ago quarter and a decrease of 6.4 per cent compared to €2.4bn in the second quarter 2009.

Wireless 3G growth was offset by a strong 2G decline, optics were impacted by a decline in terrestrial, while submarine networks enjoyed another quarter of strong growth. IP routing revenues were up and fixed NGN and IMS reported strong growth, albeit off a low base.

Chief executive, Ben Verwaayen, said: “We have achieved significant operational progress. We are rapidly reshaping our cost and expense structure, having achieved 80 per cent of our €750m target in annualized savings year to date. Against what remains a challenging market environment, we reiterate our view that our addressable market should be down between 8 per cent and 12 per cent at constant currency and that we will achieve an adjusted operating income around breakeven this year.”

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Ciena set to pick up Nortel’s optical and carrier Ethernet business

Carrier network specialist Ciena has forged an agreement with Nortel to acquire the exiting Canadian firm’s optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets for $390m in cash and ten million shares of Ciena common stock estimated to be worth a further $131m.

The assets are owned by Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business and include the firm’s long-haul optical transport portfolio, metro optical Ethernet switching and transport solutions, Ethernet transport, aggregation and switching technology, multiservice SONET/SDH product families, and network management software products.

Gary Smith, Ciena’s CEO and president, said he believes the transaction will position the firm for faster growth through greater geographic reach and a deeper portfolio of solutions.

The company intends to make employment offers to at least 2,000 Nortel employees under the deal, with Ciena expecting to incur integration-related costs of approximately $180m.

As we have seen with Nortel’s other asset sales, this proposed transaction is also subject to a competitive bidding process and requires the approval of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Ciena expects hearings before these courts to be held within the next several weeks.

Earlier this month Nortel said it is planning to sell off its GSM and GSM-R (GSM for railways) assets via an open auction process. The business transaction will also include GSM related patents and non-exclusive licenses to other relevant patents.

Subject to approval of the bidding procedures filed with the US and Canadian courts, qualified bidders will be required to submit offers for the assets by November 5, 2009. The auction itself is scheduled for November 9.

NSN, Juniper eye up IP-Optical partnership

Kit vendor Nokia Siemens Networks and security and infrastructure firm Juniper Networks deepened their relationship  on Tuesday, pooling their respective resources in optical and IP networking.

The two companies will jointly offer an integrated IP-Optical platform, including 10G, 40G and 100G IP over DWDM solutions with management integration and GMPLS control plane interworking.

NSN and Juniper said that the implementation of long-haul DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing) optics on router line interface cards will increase network efficiency by reducing the need for redundant transponders, but can present network management challenges because IP and optical networks are traditionally managed separately. To address these concerns, NSN and Juniper are offering tools to manage the entire router-to-optical link as a single entity.

The platform will be built on Juniper’s T Series Core Routers, NSN’s hiT7300 WDM kit and managed by its carrier grade Transport Network Management System (TNMS).

Juniper and NSN jumped into bed together earlier this month when they formed a joint venture to address the Carrier Ethernet market. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the venture extends the previously announced partnership designed to deliver a fully interoperable Carrier Ethernet platform for mobile backhaul, business services and residential broadband networks.

The deal includes Juniper’s MX Series Ethernet Services Routers, NSN’s A-series Carrier Ethernet Switches as well as the Finnish firm’s network management system, which NSN claims can reduce OPEX on network administration by as much as 80 per cent.

The new offering should be available to carriers by the fourth quarter of 2009, the companies said.