The UK Government has described how it plans to spend the £400 million investment aimed at bringing bring ‘full fibre’ connections – installing fibre-optic cables to individual properties – to two million more homes across the country.

More than half of the metro WDM bandwidth deployed in 2017 will be coherent 200G or above, with the highest volume coming from compact data centre interconnect (DCI) equipment used by cloud and colocation providers, according to the most recent Optical Applications Report from Cignal AI, a networking component and equipment market research firm.

Optical components companies have finally emerged from the shadow of the dot-com crash, with the majority returning to profitability in 2016, according to market research firm LightCounting in its ‘State of the Optical Communications Industry’ report.

In fact, the sales-weighted average profitability of publicly-traded optical component and module suppliers reached nine per cent in 2016, exceeded the average net profits of their main customers – communication service providers (CSPs) and suppliers of networking equipment (see figure).

The popularity of gigabit services has soared over the past year, and there are now at least 603 operations around the world offering gigabit internet services, a jump of 72 percent since June 2016, according to test and measurement vendor Viavi Solutions.

The global consumption of fibre optic sensors will increase to reach $5.98 billion in 2026, up from $3.38 billion in 2016, according to the latest market forecast and analysis from ElectroniCast Consultants.

The study considers both distributed continuous sensors and point (local) fibre-optics sensors. The market share in terms of value is segmented according to region and application category, which include manufacturing, civil engineering, military and aerospace, petrochemical and energy, and biomedical/scientific applications.

The optics market will enjoy robust growth in 2017 even though many network operators are cutting capital expenditure, according to market research firm LightCounting, which has just issued an update to its Optical Communication Market Forecast.

Ofcom has set out detailed plans for improving access to BT’s infrastructure, which include allowing fibre used for business broadband connections, known as leased lines, to share the incumbent’s underground ducts and telegraph poles.

The measures are designed to spur competition and investment in broadband networks, and reduce the UK’s historical reliance on Openreach, the access network business within BT Group.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is examining the use of the word “fibre” in advertising.

The advertising watchdog said it had “evolving concerns” about the advertising of “fibre” broadband services. Currently the term “fibre” is used in to describe services carried over both part-fibre and full-fibre connections.

The worldwide market for optical data centre interconnect (DCI) equipment was on fire in 2016 as service providers, internet content providers (ICPs) and enterprises invested to interconnect their expanding and proliferating data centre sites. Globally, optical data centre interconnect (DCI) hardware revenues grew by 49 per cent in 2016 to reach $1.9 billion.

IHS expects that, with continuing data centre growth, the worldwide optical DCI market will hit $4.5 billion in 2021, a five-year compound annual growth rate of 18 per cent.

Optical analyst firm LightCounting has soothing words for optical investors: don’t panic, optical component and module sales in 2017 will be just fine.

Though several suppliers of components and modules guided for lower revenues in the first quarter of 2017, raising concerns of a potential market downturn, LightCounting says its analysis suggests that these concerns are not justified.