5-Year Forecast: Optical Transport Market Reaches $18 Billion by 2025

Dell’Oro Group published an update to the Optical Transport 5-Year Forecast report in July 2021.

 

Optical Transport Market Forecasted to Grow Through 2025

The Optical Transport market, largely driven by WDM equipment, is forecasted to increase in size annually for the next five years, reaching nearly $18 billion. This forecast update is unchanged from our previous forecast. That said, we did lower our outlook for WDM Metro since the coherent 400 Gbps ZR (400ZR) pluggable optics are now available and interest in using them in an IPoDWDM architecture seems high.

Coherent ZR Optical Pluggable Emerging

We are predicting coherent ZR optical pluggable demand to reach a material amount in 2022, starting with 400ZR. We project this pluggable optic will be in high demand among Internet content providers (ICPs), driving a very high percentage growth rate for the next few years. Following the success of 400ZR, we anticipate 800ZR will enter the market a few years later. We forecast the ZR pluggable optics market will surpass $500 million in annual sales by 2025.

1+ Tbps to Follow 800 Gbps

Demand for 800 Gbps-capable line cards, first introduced in early 2020, has rapidly increased, demonstrating a strong rate of adoption as well as the markets continued desire for higher performance DWDM transponder cards. As such, we believe the market is already preparing to release the next single carrier wavelength speed.

We predict the next wavelength speed following 800 Gbps will be 1200 Gbps (1.2 Tbps). Based on the timing of past coherent DSP introductions, we anticipate 1.2 Tbps-capable line cards could enter the market before the end of 2023.

We forecast that by 2025 about one-third of all coherent wavelength shipments will be from a line card capable of transmitting a signal at a speed of 800 Gbps or higher.

​

About the Report The Dell’Oro Group Optical Transport 5-Year Forecast Report offers a complete overview of the Optical Transport industry with tables covering manufacturers’ revenue, average selling prices, unit shipments, wavelength shipments (by speed up to 1.2 Tbps). The report tracks DWDM long haul, WDM metro, multiservice multiplexers (SONET/SDH), optical switch, optical packet platforms, data center interconnect (metro and long haul), and disaggregated WDM. Click here to learn more about the report or contact us at dgsales@delloro.com.