The optical cross-connect may have been one of the symbols of irrational exuberance during the telecom bubble, but it may yet make a comeback, according to Emanuel Nachum, vice president of Americas marketing for ECI Telecom.
As carriers deploy reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) with increasing numbers of degrees (or wavelength switching capacities), they will eventually want a next-gen optical cross-connect to manage those connections more efficiently, Nachum said in a panel discussion on ROADMs at NXTcomm yesterday. “We’re not there today,” he said. “These devices are still expensive.”
About three-fourths of the ROADMs deployed today have just two degrees, said panelist Jason Marchek, an analyst for Current Analysis. “The multi-degree ROADM market is still in its infancy,” he said.
Still, some carriers are beginning to talk to ECI, which has a 10-degree ROADM, about the usefulness of 14- and 16-degree ROADMs, Nachum said. “When you get to so many multi-degree ROADMs, at some point, it will make sense to have a different type of network element to manage this capacity more efficiently. This will probably be a next-generation optical cross-connect.”
Equipment vendors lost money on optical cross-connects a few years back. Nortel Networks famously acquired optical cross-connect start-up Xros for $3.25 billion in 2000, shelving the product in 2002. Lucent Technologies ended development of its LambdaRouter in 2002 after a lack of traction in the market. Sales of Corvis’ cross-connects had slowed to a crawl by 2003.
