Telecom equipment maker Tellabs has launched its mini optical network terminals (ONTs) designed to lower the cost of optical local area network (LAN) deployment for enterprises.
The mini ONTs can be installed inside office walls or cubicle raceways, which frees up desktop space and cuts deployment costs.
According to the company, the Tellabs 100 series mini ONT reduces cabling and space requirements, eliminates fiber jumpers and desk/wall mounts and requires no power or battery backup at the desktop.
Tellabs says that, compared to a conventional active Ethernet LAN, its optical LAN saves up to 70 percent in capital costs, lowers power consumption by 80 percent, reduces space requirements by 90 percent and reduces the cost of new building construction by 21 percent.
David Dines, an analyst with ACG Research, questioned those figures. "Unfortunately, we could not see any hard data to back up these numbers," he wrote in a recent blog.
Dines stressed that if Tellabs could support those estimates with hard numbers, this innovation could spur momentum for the optical LAN market. "The challenges to greater market acceptance will be 1) the inertia of active Ethernet switching being the de facto standard for LANs and 2) persuading architects, general contractors and higher level decision makers that optical LAN is a bona fide option. Both challenges are daunting but not insurmountable, and seeing how the market reacts to this new approach will be interesting," he concluded.
