The ITU announced today that its Telecommunication Standardization Sector had approved new world standards for next generation optical networks that will provide ultra-high capacity using Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (DWDM). The new standards are a result of the work programme initiated by ITU to define optical technology which goes beyond point-to-point architectures, thus allowing for intelligent optical networking.
Because DWDM uses different optical wavelengths to transmit multiple signals over a single optical fibre, ultra-high service capacity can be offered over fibre cables, making the most of the existing infrastructure.
End-to-end optical networking will allow the delivery of robust managed high-bandwidth services.
The market for optical networks aims at meeting the growing needs of service providers, and in particular ISPs whose bandwidth hungry customers demand ever-faster connections.
Optical networking is a multi-billion dollar business sector that promises to offer advantages such as lower operating costs for carriers and lower cost per-bandwidth for users.
"The OTN work answers the urgent need of telecommunication providers to manage ultra-high capacity networks and provides the capabilities for evolving to a multi-service transport platform supporting Internet, IP, other packet-based data transport services and legacy traffic", said Peter Wery, Chairman of ITU-T Study Group 15.