Seems like everyone is putting in their 100G two cents in the second half of 2012, preparing for when the technology really comes into its own next year. This morning, one of the earliest deployers of 100G updated the status of its current adoption: Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings).
Verizon says it has added 20,921km of 100G route miles to its USA ultra-longhaul network, and another 2,600km across the Atlantic in Europe. Verizon started commercial deployments of Ciena’s coherent 100G technology on selected routes over a year ago in both the US and Europe.
They weren’t in a hurry though, which makes sense since the economics of 100G weren’t as good as 10x10G at the time unless you had limited modern fiber on key routes and simply needed the capacity. That continues to evolve, and given the growing wave of deployments announced recently along with Verizon’s expanding usage it seems we’re probably at or near the tipping point where 100G makes sense in its own right.
On the other hand, Verizon boasts 800,000 route miles of network globally, so technically it’s less than 3% done and 97+% to go. But a fair amount of that 800K is undersea and not necessarily their own fiber directly (consortiums).
Further deployments by Verizon this year have also used Ciena’s gear according to the PR. Pundits will no doubt note that Verizon is not mentioning Infinera in this release despite earlier speculation. On the other hand, as a commenter noted yesterday the Zayo deployment looks like a win for them.
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Categories: Internet Backbones · Telecom Equipment
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800k route miles… that’s a lot.