The optical space has been a tough market for a very long time as the capex bubble of the late 90's resulted in a dearth of spending in the core telecom infrastructure. The industry has witnessed fits and starts for most of the past decade as various regions experienced build-outs and some modest upgrade cycles within the US, mostly on a route by route basis.
This may be starting to change where we will see the need for a new, and more sustainable, upgrade cycle as the industry moves from 10G to 40G/100G technologies.
The potential of the upgrade cycle has been discussed widely so this article will defer to others for that topic. Instead, we would like to highlight...