Fiber-optic adapters: more than just a good mate: the job isn't necessarily over when the appropriate price/ performance assessment is made.(product update)

For observers of the communications industry, it is hard to ignore that the fiber-optic market is back in a big way. The comeback is being fueled predominantly by service providers' fiber-to-the-premises efforts, with SBC and Verizon laying fiber ever deeper into their networks, and demanding products as well as skilled labor to do so.

Statistics from the TIA's recently released 2006 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast indicate the United States telecommunications industry will grow at a projected nine percent compound annual growth rate from 2006 through 2009, including a projected 10.2 percent growth rate this year. The market will climb from last year's $856.9 billion to $1.2 trillion in 2009. Certainly the service providers' fiber-to-the-premises efforts are a significant driver of that growth.

"The statistics in our new report reveal the telecom industry is expanding once again," says Matthew J. Flanigan, TIA's president. "The U.S. market is back on an upward path, and the international markets are growing even faster." Total communications spending outside the U.S. reached $1.8 trillion last year, up 11.4 percent over 2004.

Heavy traffic, steady growth

"2004 was not a fluke year," adds Arthur Gruen of Wilkofsky Gruen Associates, and one of the report's principal authors. "The U.S. market is in a period of sustained growth."

In a statement announcing the report's availability, the TIA stated, "Increased spending on fiber-optic cable [was] the principal driver of the rebound. Rising traffic in the network is fueling the demand for fiber. Although not regaining its prior high levels, fiber revenue in 2006 will climb to more than half that of 2000 and will be a catalyst for growth rather than for de cline over the next four years."

The resurgence in activity surrounding fiber-optic cabling is not restricted to the public network/outside plant arena. While the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE; www.ieee.org) will publish the 10GBase-T copper-based 10-Gigabit Ethernet standard this summer, the fiber-optic versions of 10-GbE have been on the market for more than three years. In that time, fiber has been the only option for enterprise end users with the highest throughput needs, and fiber-optic cabling has served those users in ultra-high-speed environments, such as data …