PDF of this tutorialCarriers are realizing new revenues by cost effectively introducing high-speed, protocol-transparent wavelength services via new low-initial-cost platforms. (DWDM systems are now available at a cost of about $25,000 per wavelength, both sides.) In fact, many carriers are realizing full return on their investments in less than one year because both they and enterprises alike recognize the new relationships for what they clearly are: win-win scenarios. The affordability of the networking solutions that enable WDM services enables carriers to target market segments they could not previously support. Because the cost for the carriers is low, carriers are pricing the services aggressively; because the cost for the enterprises is low, demand is significantly increasing. Carriers can offer ESCON services that are less expensive than standard T3 services, and can provide Gigabit Ethernet, fibre channel, and others, at nearly the same price.
Until just a few years ago, incumbent carriers were reluctantly willing to sell dark fiber to enterprise customers who dealt with the networking issues themselves. Today, though, many carriers have stopped all efforts to sell dark fiber. Selling a service means winning a customer; selling dark fiber may mean feeding a competitor. The primary benefit of this business opportunity to carriers is twofold:
- Carriers create new revenue streams today—From a single, flexible platform, carriers can lease protocol-transparent, high-speed LAN and storage-area network (SAN) services to Fortune 500 organizations, banks, governments, and financial institutions requiring up to hundreds of high-speed connections, as well as small- and medium-sized enterprises requiring token ring, FDDI, and Ethernet services.
- Carriers future-proof their networks—Deployment of a sophisticated optical-networking platform lays the foundation for the all-optical network. A complete optical-network infrastructure will include DWDM systems, optical gateways, and optical cross-connects and permeate the entire network (i.e., the enterprise access, metropolitan, regional, and long-haul backbone segments). The carrier implementing an optical-networking services platform today positions itself to be at the forefront of this developing trend.
