Abstract

The needs of European operators are rather different to those of their US based counterparts. These differences are not so much due to differing traffic volumes but rather due to the geography, population distribution and commercial environment of a typical European country, such as the U.K. The population in many European countries is fairly uniformly distributed with average distances between major cities typically 100–200 km. This contrasts with the U.S.A. where a few massive metropolitan areas are separated by thousands of kilometres. Once consequence of this is that European operators tend not to have strong drivers for ultra long haul (>1000 km) WDM line systems.

© 2002 Optical Society of America