After sputtering for the past several years, the datacomm building cabling market is projected to revive during the next five years.
Frank Murawski, president of FTM Consulting, Inc., based in Hummelstown, PA, indicates that the firm's recent research points to a market renewal. Murawski says this renewal will be driven by optical fiber cabling.
In the just-released market research study, "Fiber Cabling Systems: U.S. Building Market," fiber cabling growth in the 20-plus percent range is forecast.
"For the past three years, the cabling market has been in a severe turndown caused by the economic slowdown restricting capital expenditures for local area networks (LANs), in conjunction with cabling market saturation," Murawski indicates.
Murawski notes that copper cabling, the mainstay of the marketplace, grew at phenomenal rates in the 1990s as the initial LANs, using Category 5 copper cabling, were installed in the larger enterprises. By 1999, most of these large networks were already in place, leading to the onset of market saturation for the cabling market. Now, with the economy rebounding, capital expenditures for networks are expected to resume.
However, the study states that double-digit growth in optical fiber cabling will not occur until 2005, as pent-up demand for newer fiber cabling systems arrives. A combination of requirements for bottleneck relief at critical network points, such as Storage Area Networks (SANs), adoption of new broadband applications and the availability of economic new fiber technologies, such as VCSELs and laser-enhanced multimode fibers, will all come together in 2005, according to the report.
The study points out that the two largest cabling applications for fiber will be campus and SANs. Fiber-to-the-Desk (FTTD) is also forecast to have high growth, but is expected to be a much smaller market than the other two high-growth applications. Riser cabling is projected to continue to be the largest fiber cabling application during the forecast period.
This study provides detailed analysis by five major cabling applications that include: SAN, FTTD, campus, riser and Fiber-to-the-Zone (FTTZ). Market forecasts and analysis are provided for each of these five applications, segmented by singlemode/multimode fibers, Gigabit Ethernet vs. Legacy usage and Gigabit Ethernet by performance levels. The study also focuses on the developments of VCSEL technologies, including the newer 1300 nm-long wavelength devices expected to have major implications on the future of the optical fiber cabling market.
The study is now available from FTM Consulting. Fore more information visit
www.ftmconsultinginc.com.
