The Internet is fundamentally changing the face of networking, and carriers know that keeping up the old-fashioned way is not going to work. Stocks of telecom and Internet infrastructure trendsetters such as Nortel and JDS Uniphase suffered a shakedown in the past few weeks, partly over fears that huge spending on new networks was beginning to slow. But service providers tell a somewhat different story than the one that rattled Wall Street's cage so fiercely, with plans to keep pushing high-speed optical technologies into their networks as rapidly as possible, for as long as bandwidth demand continues to surge. Perrin cautions that IDC is in the midst of wrapping up its current study and won't have final figures for another month or two. According to IDC, in 1999 the global market for DWDM equipment reached 4.8 billion-a 100 percent increase over 1998.
Optical networks are incredibly hot.
But the company's first priority in the months to come is to drive up utilization and not necessarily to increase capital spending by building more network capability, even though it later will add capacity in network segments expected to experience significant demand. As to capital spending, Cornog says Williams wants to insure that it has adequate traffic capacity. But we are going to be closely evaluating every dollar we spend. Its multi-conduit network design allows for newer generations of fiber. Broadwing Inc., a new and next generation carrier based in Austin, Texas, and Cincinnati, Ohio, already has built an 18,000 mile next generation fiber optic network deployed coast to coast.