Thanks to a surge in spending by Internet content providers in North America, optical spending surged an estimated $40 million in the second quarter of this year.
According to a recent report by Infonetics Research, Internet content providers, such as Google, helped generate a wave of spending that benefited Adva, BTI and Infinera.
“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,” said Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for carrier transport networking at Infonetics Research.
Other highlights from the report included:
• Worldwide optical network hardware revenue, including SONET/SDH and WDM, totaled $3.3 billion in the second quarter, a sequential gain of 27 percent aided by strong seasonal performances from Huawei and ZTE
• Global optical spending was roughly flat year-over-year as strength in Asia Pacific offset weakening spending trends in EMEA
• Worldwide WDM equipment revenue in the second quarter of this year was up 6 percent year-over-year
• The first half of 2014 brought another 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 compared to the second quarter a year ago, while Fujitsu’s and Alcatel-Lucent’s decreased.
