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Another day, another win for Infinera? Today Zayo Bandwidth became the latest in a long string of wins for the upstart DWDM vendor, Zayo has apparently already installed Infinera’s PICs to light fiber between Chicago, NYC, and Washington DC. Now it should be noted that Zayo bought Citynet’s wholesale division which had already picked Infinera in 2005, so this new PR shouldn’t come as a huge shock.
Nevertheless a pattern has been developing ever since Infinera came on the market. If the network is not an ILEC or PTT, then they almost always win. To summarize their known customer list:
| USA | Europe/Asia |
| Level 3 | Interoute |
| Global Crossing | Reliance Globalcom (Flag) |
| XO Communications | OVH |
| Qwest (via OnFiber) | EWE TEL |
| Equinix | Carphone Warehouse |
| Integra Telecom | RETN |
| FPL Fibernet | Bulgartel |
| Telekenex | North China Grid |
| Deltacom | |
| Cox Communications | Academic |
| 360Networks | Internet2 |
| Zayo | BoreasNET |
| New Mexico |
Any other optical startup in the last 10 years would kill for this much success in their first three years of selling gear.
But this has now set up an interesting dichotomy: the ILECs and PTTs are using substantially different gear to light their fiber than the next generation backbones are. Gear with very different cost profiles and capabilities. In my opinion, this situation is unstable and someone is going to be proven right over the next few years.
Based on what I have heard of their gear’s benefits in the field, I’m betting on Infinera.
10 responses to date ↓
Agree. Good job.
Rob,
I agree with you. Infenera perhaps will win the battle eventually.
They have a 3-5-year lead over its competitors. And they spend million to get their PIC products OSMINE certified by Telcordia to meet RBOCs requirements in OSS/BSS, but still no win so far.
How do you compare the PIC with AccLu/Siemens’ gears, and explain why ROBCs still play the games even PIC has so apparent advantages over others. Perhaps waiting for a better price?
George
Yes, Infinera would certainly appear to be on the mover here, no dobut. Nice reporting, btw. In recent times I’ve thought about compiling such a list, myself, so thanks for the legwork.
The wild card that I see is the still-to-be-decided modulation formats that carriers will ultimately choose.
Using parallel optics (inversely multiplexing multiple wavelengths to achieve a higher rate at the end points) in lieu of solving the PMD issues of today would appear to favor Infinera’s approach. What if, on the other hand, a breakthrough occurs that enables sustainable and universally-interoperable RZ or NRZ formats over single- (or even dual-) wavelengths rated higher than 10 Gbps or even >100 Gbps?
Today’s hodge-podge of emerging modulation schemes almost beg for the neutralizing capabilities offered by Infinera’s optical-to-electrical reduction at multi-degree nodes. How long will this advantage last? I suppose that is at least one of the questions that needs answering. Thoughts?
frank@fttx.org
One can never count out the impact of a breakthrough on any technology. But Infinera’s point seems to be that nobody will care how much you can stick on a wavelength if you can’t do it cheaper per bit pushed, and we should see any such technology coming well before it becomes cost effective. Then you just integrate it into a PIC…
Infinera wins key approval for Chinese market (INFN)
Co announces that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information has issued a Network Access License to Infinera for the Infinera DTN. Obtaining this certification is an important requirement for the deployment of the Infinera DTN by China’s public sector and private sector telecommunications carriers.
Since INFN was up in a down quarter, obviously they’re gaining market share. According to Infonetics (June 4, 2008, http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2008/ms08.opt.1q08.nr.asp )
Infinera posted an 82% spike in worldwide ROADM equipment sales in 1Q08, allowing them to jump ahead of Nokia Siemens and Cisco to first place.
Some good points in this item from xchangemag.com :
Scaling to 40G and Beyond: The Risks and Rewards of Innovation
David J. Dunphy of Telecom Strategy Partners | 06/02/2008
This article was prompted by xchange Editor in Chief Paula Bernier’s recent Q&A with Infinera CEO Jagdeep Singh.
http://tinyurl.com/4c8vwd
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