Evolution of gigabit lightwave transmission systems

Lightwave transmission systems have rapidly become the technology of choice for the transport needs of an increasingly information-driven society. Always pioneers in this relatively young but technologically explosive media, AT&T is moving forward rapidly with the deployment of lightwave technology with ever-increasing transmission speeds to satisfy the continually growing quality and bandwidth expectations of the competitive information-services marketplace. After briefly tracing the historical evolution of AT&T lightwave products, this article focuses on development and deployment plans for the next several years as the technology takes a giant step into the gigabit arena, a capability almost undreamed of a decade ago. The article concludes with a look at a transition wave-division-multiplexing strategy and some predictions for the lightwave technology environment of the early 1990s.