Due to the potential of the new generation of pluggable coherent modules, 400G market share keep growing in 2022, Coherent 400G will still drive the deployment of 100G.

“Starting this year, 400G speeds will be the main source of growth in the optical equipment market,” the analysts said. However, there will be a major turning point in 2022, the low cost 100G pluggable technology opens up a whole new market for network edge coherence technology.

Edge network deployments of 100G and 400G coherent modules may come at the expense of direct detection modules, which will peak this year. However, the deployment of 400G ZR modules are reduced as the performance of these modules may become less attractive to the three major cloud providers.

For platforms using such modules, market research firms are betting on a new generation of compact optical transmission systems. Half of metro WDM’s spending in 2022 is expected to be concentrated on compact modular platforms, in part because of their ability to support flexible classified network architectures.