Disaggregated DWDM systems revenue up by 36% YoY in 2Q21: Dell’Oro Group

Disaggregated Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) systems revenue outperformed the overall optical transport network market in 2Q1 with a year-over-year growth of 36% while the Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) market mostly remained unchanged, said a new report by market research firm Dell’Oro Group.

“What we see is that this type of platform architecture, where transponder units are independent of the line systems, is being more widely embraced beyond the Internet content providers. Also, it is no longer just for metro applications. Recently, the highest growth rates have been from long-haul applications,” said Jimmy Yu, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group.

During the quarter, the top vendors by revenue share for disaggregated transponder units were Ciena, Infinera, and Cisco.

Dell’Oro Group said the immediate need to migrate to higher speed and better transponder technology has been one of the main drivers for using disaggregated transponder units. “As a result, 400+ Gbps wavelengths were the fastest-growing line speeds on these systems”.

It has raised the forecast for disaggregated DWDM system as a result of the strong quarter.

It now expects revenue of disaggregated transponder units to surpass $2 billion this year.