As telecommunications carriers search for more bandwidth to meet the demands of an increasingly information-hungry consumer, wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) will continue to grow in importance, according to officials at Lucent Technologies.
Fast lasers used in time division multiplexing may not be able to operate over existing fiber, so the company has seen a rapid increase in the sale of its eight-channel WDM product since 1995.
Lucent predicts the market will come close to $1 billion this year, accelerating to $2 billion in 1998 as international carriers begin demanding WDM and US capacity requirements continue.