Today's news that Sprint Corp. (NYSE: FON) has won a 10-year contract with Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) is the latest of several announcements that put the spotlight on wavelength services.

Wave services are important to the future of optical networking because they enable carriers to extend the benefits of optical networks (including faster and easier provisioning) to corporate nets, replacing private lines and cumbersome Sonet links, instead of restricting these features to the core of the network.

The value of the Sprint agreement wasn't provided, but Sprint acknowledges that it's a "multimillion-dollar" deal that calls for the carrier to supply 27 OC48 (2.5-Gbit/s) connections in 13 points of presence over the next decade -- and that it includes wavelength services. The network will handle financial transactions involving over 4,400 Bank of America locations nationwide (see Big Bank Buys Sprint Services).

The bank says the Sprint arrangement does not affect a $70 million, 10-year agreement made with Broadwing Inc. (NYSE: BRW) this past April for a similar wave service deployment (see Bank of America Picks Broadwing). "Sprint and Broadwing will work in tandem, in a load-balancing arrangement," says a Bank of America spokesperson.

Neither Sprint nor the bank are divulging the brand of equipment underlying the plan. While Sprint is a longtime customer of Ciena Corp. (Nasdaq: CIEN) for DWDM gear, that vendor is also keeping mum. Broadwing acknowledges using Corvis Corp. (Nasdaq: CORV) equipment to supply wave services. At press time, the bank had not responded to requests for the particular brand of gear that will terminate the Sprint and/or Broadwing services.

The announcement caps a flurry of recent news hinting at an upsurge in demand for services that use the power of DWDM to provision high-speed data links faster and more cheaply than using Sonet. Here's a rundown of recent events:

Does all this a trend make? Not surprisingly, carriers say yes. While wave services have been around for awhile -- and were indeed a calling card for several providers who later hit the financial skids -- some say demand is only now maturing.

"We're definitely seeing an uptick over the past 60 to 90 days," says Rusty Corne, director of product management at Level 3. His colleague, Cynthia York, director of the wavelength group, agrees. "We are seeing specific applications emerging that waves are suited to," she says. Backhauling traffic on massive cable provider and ISP networks is on the rise, she points out.

Patel of Looking Glass says consumer traffic is driving demand for wave services, which are behind the increase in IP traffic that needs to be backhauled or aggregated.

But at least one observer says it's too soon to see the wavelength bandwagon as a way out of the telecom doldrums.

"There are undoubtedly signs of growth in the market, but carriers don't issue press releases for ATM and OC3 customers like they do every time they sign a new wavelength contract," says David Gross, senior optical networking analyst at Communications Industry Researchers Inc.

Nevertheless, the mini-trend marks a growth curve: Gross predicts the market for retail and wholesale wave services will reach $450 million in 2006, about five times its current level (see Metro DWDM, page 3).

Gross says the majority of wave services will be wholesale transactions like the ones announced by Looking Glass and Level 3, rather than retail in nature, like Sprint's and Broadwing's deal with Bank of America. He says the lack of fiber going into buildings will continue to pose a barrier to corporate wavelength service deployments.

Whether or not there's a trend afoot, it's clear that progress is happening on some levels. "Hard to say if these announcements indicate a real trend for growth, but certainly DWDM transport gear is improving," writes Scott Clavenna, president of PointEast Research LLC and director of research at Light Reading in an email today.

Advances in net management and monitoring have been made, he says, and network planning tools have improved, which make it easier for carriers to deploy DWDM faster and more easily than before, "without disrupting service or requiring a complete reengineering of the optical layer... This greatly enables wave service delivery and support."

— Mary Jander, Senior Editor, Light Reading
www.lightreading.comWant to know more? The big cheeses of the optical networking industry will be discussing service trends like this one at Lightspeed Europe. Check it out at Lightspeed Europe 02.