The Telecommunications Industry Association has released a new report on the status of capacity utilization in the U.S. optical fiber market.
The TIA concludes that data driven demand, particularly from the enterprise, continues to increase utilization of long-haul and metropolitan area networks at a pace that requires the addition of new bandwidth capacity
The report, which was released at the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference in Dallas, is part two of the "Optical Network Capacity and Utilization" white paper.
The TIA states that data driven demand continues to increase utilization of long-haul and metropolitan area networks at a pace that requires the addition of new bandwidth capacity through equipment or fiber deployment across certain routes. Since the vast majority of new fiber and channel slots were deployed over the same Tier I routes, those long-haul routes have sufficient installed capacity to meet demand for the next one to two years or more.
However, given the steady growth in traffic demand, there is a need for new capacity in certain Tier II and Tier III market long-haul routes, as well as in many metro and access networks.
The TIA finds that consumer demand continues to grow, putting pressure on metropolitan-based carriers. However, a regulatory shift in the local access market to spur fiber-based deployment is increasingly important to allow these networks to meet demand.
When local access markets become more economically attractive for fiber-based transport, the TIA predicts much greater traffic volume and a tremendous new need for network capacity deployments.
The paper details the many factors that contributed to these conclusions, such as:
Traffic across U.S. networks continues to increase at levels that are consistent with historical trends: U.S. long distance traffic is growing 7-8% per year; U.S. local voice traffic is growing 5-12% per year; and U.S. Internet traffic is growing 100% per year.
There is a cyclical relationship between end-user access speed, the type of online application used and the amount of traffic generated by the end-user. The larger the "pipe" at the level of the local access network, the greater amount of traffic volume can be expected and passed to the long-haul network.
Network capacity needed for different types of networks vary dramatically based on peak-to-average ratios (ranging from 3 to 1 for circuit switched voice traffic to 15 to 1 for private line traffic) and on network overhead factors such as protection/restoration, protocols, etc. (ranging from 32 to 50 times average demand).
Historically, 50% of long-haul fiber was lit and 33% of metro/local was lit. In contrast, by 2001, 25% of long haul was lit and between 45-75% of metro fiber was lit.
For more information visit www.tiaonline.org.