Passive Wave Primer

Tue Oct 13 20:15:42 UTC 2020

On 10/13/20 3:35 PM, Tony Wicks wrote:
> We sell some wavelengths on passive CWDM/DWDM path's between Datacentres
> (less than 80Km) to customers to spread the cost of leasing the dark fibre.
> But yes, as far as long distance (apart from bespoke offerings) I'm yet to
> see a productised alien wave service. If you are spending all that money on
> OTN kit the extra cost of the transponders is not really significant I
> suppose.

It's in some providers' catalogs (amazingly) but they seem loathe to 
actually sell it when asked.  Even then, you're spot on with the 
description of "bespoke".  I saw Zayo's product description sheet for 
it, and, while it did seem to check the boxes I'd expect, it was also 
quite expectedly very complex (they also wouldn't actually sell it to me).

At less than 80km, you don't have to worry so much about balancing light 
levels, etc. as you can usually just throw things straight into a 
mux/demux on each end and rely on the power budget of the transceiver 
itself, so that makes sense for cheap DCI.
-- 
Brandon Martin