Global optical spending is roughly flat year-over-year (2Q14 from 2Q13) as strength in Asia Pacific offset weakening spending trends in EMEA, according to Infonetic Research's new 2nd quarter 2014 (2Q14) Optical Network Hardware report.
Some highlights:
- In North America, internet content providers (ICPs) such as Google and others generated a wave of optical spending at a handful of vendors including Adva, BTI, and Infinera, altogether accounting for an estimated $40 million surge in 2Q14
- Worldwide optical network hardware revenue, including SONET/SDH and WDM, totaled $3.3 billion in 2Q14, a sequential gain of 27% aided by strong seasonal performances from Huawei and ZTE
- Worldwide WDM equipment revenue in 2Q14 is up 6% year-over-year
- The 1st half of 2014 brought another huge flood of 100G WDM shipments by Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Huawei, and Infinera
- Ciena’s and Infinera’s North American optical revenue grew rapidly on a year-over-year basis in 2Q14, while Fujitsu’s and Alcatel-Lucent’s decreased.
“While the term ‘tier-1’ is traditionally associated with the incumbent operators of Europe and RBOCs in North America, it is now qualitatively clear that tier-1 spending growth is coming from the competitive dark fiber and internet exchange carriers. These carriers, as well as vertically-integrated internet content providers (ICPs), provide a growing portion of core internet connectivity and intra-datacenter capacity,” notes Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for carrier transport networking at Infonetics Research.
