Optical Networking Market Size, Share & Forecast to 2035

The Optical Networking Market covers the optical transport equipment, coherent optics, software and services that carry traffic over fiber between data centers, cities, countries and continents, from wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems and reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs) to packet-optical switches and coherent pluggable modules. DC Market Insights values the global Optical Networking Market at USD 17.38 billion in 2025 and forecasts USD 29.45 billion by 2035, a CAGR of 5.41%. The 2025 value is built from buyer budgets: USD 302.00 billion of telecom operator capital spending at USD 32.00 of optical networking per USD 1,000 gives USD 9.66 billion, USD 456.26 billion of cloud provider capital spending at USD 13.00 per USD 1,000 gives USD 5.93 billion, and enterprises, governments and utilities add USD 1.78 billion. Coherent pluggable optics are the fastest-growing component at 10.77% a year because 800G and 1.6T modules now plug straight into routers and switches, and the Middle East and Africa is the fastest-growing region at 8.49% a year as Gulf AI campuses need new long-distance and metro routes.

Executive Summary

The Global Optical Networking Market size was valued at USD 13.12 billion in 2020, reached USD 17.38 billion in 2025, and is anticipated to reach USD 29.45 billion by 2035, at a CAGR of 5.41% during the forecast period.

Report attribute	Details
Historical Period	2020-2024
Base Year	2025
Forecast Period	2026-2035
Optical Networking Market Size 2025	USD 17.38 Billion
Optical Networking Market, CAGR	5.41%
Optical Networking Market Size 2035	USD 29.45 Billion

The market grew at 5.79% a year between 2020 and 2025, but the path was uneven. DC Market Insights estimates that spending peaked at USD 16.04 billion in 2022, fell to USD 15.00 billion in 2024 as telecom operators cut capital budgets, and then jumped 15.8% in 2025 as cloud providers began to link AI campuses with new long-distance routes. Supplier results show the same turn: Ciena reported fiscal 2025 revenue of USD 4.77 billion, up 19%, and in September 2026 raised its fiscal 2026 revenue guidance to USD 6.42 billion (Source: Ciena filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission).

DC Market Insights forecasts growth of 15.2% in 2026 to USD 20.02 billion, slowing to an average of 5.41% a year across 2025 to 2035.

Market Scope: What Does the Optical Networking Market Cover?

The Optical Networking Market covers the optical transport layer of telecom, cloud and private networks, valued at first sale in current US dollars, with 2025 as the base year and forecasts to 2035. DC Market Insights sizes it at USD 17.38 billion in 2025.

Included. WDM and dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transport systems (transponders, muxponders, line systems, amplifiers and ROADMs), coherent pluggable optics used on transport links (400ZR, OpenZR+, 800ZR, 800G ZR+ and 1.6T modules), packet-optical and optical transport network (OTN) switching platforms, submarine line terminal equipment at the landing station, network management, planning and automation software, and installation, maintenance and managed services tied to that equipment.

Excluded. Client-side optical transceivers used inside a data center hall (covered in the Optical Transceiver Market report), passive optical network (PON) access equipment for homes and businesses, fiber cable and civil works, the wet plant of subsea cable systems, dark fiber leases, and wavelength or Ethernet connectivity services sold by carriers.

How the segments fit together. The component, application, data rate and end-user splits each re-cut the same USD 17.38 billion, so every split sums to the market total. Data rate is measured by the line rate of the wavelength or coherent port, not by the client interface. The data center interconnect (DCI) application covers only the optical layer of links between data centers; router ports and services sold for those links sit in the wider Data Center Interconnect Market report.

Market Drivers: What Drives the Optical Networking Market?

Three drivers explain most of the growth in the Optical Networking Market: cloud capital budgets that jumped in 2025 (Amazon’s rose from USD 83.00 billion to USD 131.82 billion), AI campuses that are now linked into wide-area networks, and a new wave of long-haul fiber routes that each need line systems and transponders at both ends.

Cloud Buyers Spend USD 5.93 Billion on Optical Transport in 2025

Cloud capital spending sets the pace, and AI infrastructure investment now drives most of it. According to the companies’ 2025 earnings releases, Amazon’s purchases of property and equipment reached USD 131.82 billion in 2025, Alphabet’s USD 91.45 billion, Meta’s capital expenditures USD 72.22 billion and Microsoft’s additions to property and equipment USD 64.55 billion in its fiscal year to June 2025. Alphabet guided 2026 capital expenditures to USD 175.00 billion to USD 185.00 billion and Meta to USD 115.00 billion to USD 135.00 billion. DC Market Insights estimates that cloud providers spent 1.30% of their capital budgets on optical networking in 2025, or USD 5.93 billion, and forecasts USD 12.49 billion by 2035, a CAGR of 7.73%.

AI Campuses Are Linked into Wide-Area Networks

Hyperscalers now connect AI sites over their own wide-area networks. Microsoft increased its fiber network mileage by more than 25% in one year, to about 120,000 miles, to support the AI wide area network that connects its Fairwater AI sites. Nokia reported EUR 2.40 billion of orders from AI and cloud customers in 2025, and in the second quarter of 2026 its AI and cloud order intake reached EUR 2.80 billion while net sales to those customers grew 105%. DC Market Insights forecasts the data center interconnect application to grow from USD 7.11 billion (40.9%) in 2025 to USD 14.81 billion (50.3%) by 2035.

New Long-Haul Routes Need Line Systems at Both Ends

Fiber route builders are adding new capacity. Zayo plans to build more than 5,000 new long-haul fiber route miles across the United States to support AI workloads, and Lumen plans to add 34 million new intercity fiber miles for a total of 47 million by the end of 2028. Each new route needs amplifiers, ROADMs and transponders, so DC Market Insights forecasts wholesale and cable operators to grow their optical spending at 6.28% a year, faster than telecom service providers at 3.65%.

Market Trends: How Is Optical Networking Changing?

The Optical Networking Market is moving to 1.6T wavelengths and to coherent optics that plug straight into routers.

Wavelengths Reach 1.6T on a Single Carrier

Coherent modems now carry 1.6 Tb/s on one wavelength. Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme is a 3nm, 200 GBaud coherent solution supporting 1.6 Tb/s single-carrier wavelengths and has been commercially available since October 2024. AT&T trialled a 1.6 Tb/s wavelength across 296 km of its commercial long-distance network in March 2025, and Türk Telekom and ZTE carried out a 1.6T single-channel DWDM trial on a live network in April 2025. DC Market Insights forecasts the 1.2T and above class to grow from USD 1.23 billion (7.1%) in 2025 to USD 13.43 billion (45.6%) in 2035, a CAGR of 26.96%.

Coherent Pluggables Move Optics into Routers

Coherent pluggables remove a separate transponder shelf on many metro and data center links. Cisco said it now sells its pluggable optics to all the major hyperscalers, and Ciena reported record shipments of its WaveLogic 6 Nano pluggables in its fiscal third quarter of 2026. Marvell introduced the COLORZ 1600, which it calls the first 1.6T ZR and ZR+ pluggable, with customer sampling expected in the second half of 2026. DC Market Insights values coherent pluggable optics at USD 2.22 billion (12.8%) in 2025 and USD 6.18 billion (21.0%) by 2035.

Market Challenges: What Holds the Optical Networking Market Back?

Flat telecom capital budgets and a buyer base concentrated in a few cloud providers are the two constraints that DC Market Insights expects to hold the Optical Networking Market to 5.41% a year, even as transported traffic rises much faster.

Telecom Capital Budgets Are Shrinking in China

Telecom operators still buy 55.6% of optical networking in the DC Market Insights model, and their budgets are not growing. China Mobile’s 2025 capital expenditure fell 8.0% to RMB 150.90 billion, China Telecom’s fell 14.1% to RMB 80.36 billion, and China Unicom spent RMB 54.20 billion. European telecom capital spending fell 2% to EUR 64.60 billion in 2024. In the DC Market Insights model, global telecom operator capital spending grows only 2% a year from its 2025 base, so telecom service providers grow their optical spend at 3.65% a year, the second-slowest of the four buyer groups.

A Few Buyers Set Prices and Timing

Customer concentration leaves suppliers exposed to a handful of build plans. Two customers together accounted for 41.7% of Ciena’s revenue in its fiscal third quarter of 2026. DC Market Insights builds a pause in cloud spending into its low scenario, in which the 2035 market reaches USD 24.79 billion rather than USD 29.45 billion.

High-Risk Vendor Rules Split the Supplier Base

Security rules divide the market into separate supplier pools. In June 2023 the European Commission stated that Huawei and ZTE represent materially higher risks than other 5G suppliers (Source: European Commission communication), and in January 2026 it proposed a revision of the Cybersecurity Act that would require mobile operators to remove high-risk suppliers from 5G networks within three years. Huawei and ZTE equipment has been on the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Covered List since March 2021.

Market Opportunities: Where Are the New Revenue Pools?

The two largest new revenue pools in the Optical Networking Market are cloud and hyperscale providers, adding USD 6.56 billion of annual spend by 2035, and software and automation, growing at 7.91% a year.

Cloud Providers Add USD 6.56 Billion of Annual Spend by 2035

Cloud and hyperscale providers become the largest buyer group in the DC Market Insights forecast, rising from USD 5.93 billion (34.1%) in 2025 to USD 12.49 billion (42.4%) in 2035 and overtaking telecom service providers. Nokia completed its acquisition of Infinera on 28 February 2025 (Source: Nokia press release), and its Optical Networks business grew 20% in the second quarter of 2026, leading 12% constant-currency growth in Network Infrastructure (Source: Nokia Q2 2026 report).

Software and Automation Grow to USD 2.83 Billion

DC Market Insights values optical network software and automation at USD 1.32 billion (7.6%) in 2025 and USD 2.83 billion (9.6%) in 2035, the second-fastest-growing component after coherent pluggables.

Pricing: How Much of Network Capital Spending Goes to Optical Networking?

Telecom operators spent USD 9.66 billion on optical networking in 2025, or USD 32.00 of every USD 1,000 of capital spending (3.20%), and cloud providers spent USD 5.93 billion, or USD 13.00 per USD 1,000 (1.30%). These are DC Market Insights estimates covering optical systems, coherent optics, software and services, excluding fiber and civil works.

Optical networking share of buyer capital spending	2020	2025	2030	2035
Telecom operators	2.85%	3.20%	3.58%	3.95%
Cloud and hyperscale providers	2.20%	1.30%	1.10%	1.08%
Telecom operator capital spending (USD billion)	290.00	302.00	333.43	368.14
Cloud provider capital spending (USD billion)	150.00	456.26	910.00	1,161.42

The two lines move in opposite directions. In the DC Market Insights model, telecom operators put a rising share of capital into optics as wholesale routes are upgraded for cloud traffic, while cloud providers put a falling share into optics because graphics processing units (GPUs), power equipment and buildings take most of each new dollar. Price per bit keeps falling: a 1.6T wavelength carries twice the traffic of an 800G wavelength, which caps the value of each upgrade.

Standards and Regulation: Which Rules Shape Optical Networking?

Four sets of rules shape the Optical Networking Market: International Telecommunication Union (ITU) transport standards, Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) coherent interface agreements, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Ethernet standards and broadband funding programs, alongside the high-risk vendor rules covered under Market Challenges.

ITU-T G.709 and G.694.1. ITU-T G.709 defines the interfaces of the optical transport network, and the edition in force is the June 2020 edition. ITU-T G.694.1 defines the spectral grid for WDM applications, with its in-force edition dated October 2020.

OIF 800ZR and OpenZR+. The OIF published its 800ZR Implementation Agreement on 30 October 2024, covering an 800G coherent line interface for single-span, amplified 80 to 120 km DWDM links aimed at data center interconnect. The OpenZR+ multi-source agreement defines interoperability specifications for OpenZR+ pluggable coherent optics, with promoters including Arista, Cisco, Fujitsu, Innolight, Juniper, Lumentum and NTT Innovative Devices.

IEEE 802.3dj. The IEEE P802.3dj project for 200G, 400G, 800G and 1.6T Ethernet moved to IEEE Standards Association ballot with draft 3.0 in March 2026.

Broadband funding. The US Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program provides USD 42.45 billion for high-speed broadband, and the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice of 6 June 2025 adopted a technology-neutral approach to selecting subgrantees. In Europe, the Gigabit Infrastructure Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1309, fully applies from 12 May 2026 and aims to make gigabit rollout faster and cheaper, and the European Commission proposed the Digital Networks Act on 21 January 2026 to modernize and harmonize EU connectivity rules.

Market Segmentation: Which Segment Leads the Optical Networking Market?

WDM transport systems lead the Optical Networking Market with 46.0% of 2025 value, data center interconnect leads applications with 40.9%, and telecom service providers lead buyers with 45.6%. Among components, coherent pluggable optics are the fastest-growing segment at 10.77% a year, against 4.34% for WDM transport systems, because 800G and 1.6T pluggables let cloud and metro networks drop a separate transponder layer.

By Component: WDM Transport Systems Lead with 46.0%

Component	2025 (USD billion)	Share 2025	2035 (USD billion)	CAGR 2025-2035
WDM Transport Systems	7.99	46.0%	12.22	4.34%
Coherent Pluggable Optics	2.22	12.8%	6.18	10.77%
Packet-Optical and OTN Switching	2.33	13.4%	3.00	2.58%
Software and Automation	1.32	7.6%	2.83	7.91%
Services	3.51	20.2%	5.21	4.03%

WDM transport systems keep the largest share because long-haul, submarine terminal and high-count metro routes still need line systems, amplifiers and embedded 1.6T transponders. Packet-optical and OTN switching grows slowest, at 2.58% a year, as DC Market Insights expects more traffic to be groomed in routers rather than in optical switches and operators to plan the integration and migration of legacy system platforms over several years.

By Application: Data Center Interconnect Leads with 40.9%

Application	2025 (USD billion)	Share 2025	2035 (USD billion)	CAGR 2025-2035
Data Center Interconnect	7.11	40.9%	14.81	7.62%
Metro and Regional Transport	4.59	26.4%	6.60	3.70%
Long-Haul and Submarine Terminal	2.47	14.2%	3.71	4.16%
Mobile and Broadband Backhaul	2.14	12.3%	2.80	2.73%
Enterprise and Government Networks	1.08	6.2%	1.53	3.58%

Data center interconnect grows fastest at 7.62% a year. Mobile and broadband backhaul grows slowest because DC Market Insights expects mobile network densification to slow after the main 5G rollout.

By Data Rate: 200G and 400G Lead with 46.0%

Data rate	2025 (USD billion)	Share 2025	2035 (USD billion)	CAGR 2025-2035
Up to 100G	2.87	16.5%	0.94	-10.53%
200G and 400G	7.99	46.0%	4.83	-4.92%
800G	5.28	30.4%	10.25	6.85%
1.2T and Above	1.23	7.1%	13.43	26.96%

200G and 400G wavelengths held the largest share of 2025 value, with 800G close behind at 30.4%. Each coherent generation follows a similar technology adoption curve in the DC Market Insights model: data center interconnect first, then long-haul routes, then metro and backhaul deployment and upgrade cycles. DC Market Insights forecasts the 1.2T and above class to become the largest data rate class before 2035, while links of 100G and below shrink by 10.53% a year.

By End User: Telecom Service Providers Lead with 45.6%

End user	2025 (USD billion)	Share 2025	2035 (USD billion)	CAGR 2025-2035
Telecom Service Providers	7.92	45.6%	11.34	3.65%
Wholesale and Cable Operators	1.74	10.0%	3.20	6.28%
Cloud and Hyperscale Providers	5.93	34.1%	12.49	7.73%
Enterprises, Government and Utilities	1.78	10.3%	2.42	3.10%

Cloud and hyperscale providers grow fastest at 7.73% a year and become the largest buyer group by 2035. Enterprises, governments and utilities grow slowest at 3.10% a year, although DC Market Insights expects research and education networks and power utilities to keep buying private optical networks for resilience.

DC Exclusive: The Buyer Capex Intensity Model and End User × Component Matrix

At USD 4.02 billion in 2025, WDM transport systems bought by telecom service providers are the single largest cell of the matrix and 23.1% of all optical networking spending. The matrix cross-tabulates who buys optical networking and what they buy. It is a DC Market Insights model, not a shipment count, built from 104 inputs: 32 capital spending values (16 years of telecom and cloud budgets), 32 optical intensity values, 16 enterprise and government spending values, 20 end user × component mix shares and 4 supplier disclosures used as a cross-check.

2025, USD billion	WDM Transport Systems	Coherent Pluggable Optics	Packet-Optical and OTN Switching	Software and Automation	Services	Total
Telecom Service Providers	4.02	0.64	1.39	0.53	1.34	7.92
Wholesale and Cable Operators	0.91	0.19	0.19	0.12	0.33	1.74
Cloud and Hyperscale Providers	2.51	1.29	0.42	0.51	1.21	5.93
Enterprises, Government and Utilities	0.56	0.11	0.32	0.16	0.63	1.78
Total	7.99	2.22	2.33	1.32	3.51	17.38

Cloud and hyperscale providers spend 21.7% of their optical budget on coherent pluggables, more than two and a half times the 8.1% share of telecom service providers, which still favor transponder shelves and OTN switching for national backbones. Enterprises, governments and utilities spend 35.3% of their budget on services, the highest share of any buyer, because they rarely run their own optical engineering teams. Rows and columns are rounded to 2 decimals and may not add exactly.

The buyer capex intensity model has inputs that any reader can check: telecom operator capital spending (about USD 302.00 billion in 2025), cloud provider capital spending (about USD 456.26 billion in 2025) and the share of each that goes to optical networking. Multiplying each budget by its optical share and adding enterprise and government spending gives the market. The model and its assumptions are explained on our research methodology page.

Regional Insights: Which Region Leads the Optical Networking Market?

Asia Pacific leads the Optical Networking Market with 38.6% of 2025 value, and the Middle East and Africa is the fastest-growing region at 8.49% a year, because DC Market Insights expects Gulf AI campuses and new national backbones to add optical capacity from a small base.

Asia Pacific Leads with 38.6% Share

Asia Pacific buyers spent USD 6.71 billion on optical networking in 2025, and DC Market Insights forecasts USD 10.78 billion in 2035, a CAGR of 4.86%. China is the largest market in the region, but its three state-owned operators cut capital spending in 2025, so Asia Pacific loses 2.0 points of share by 2035. India grows fastest in the region in the DC Market Insights allocation, and Vodafone Idea is modernizing its transport network with Ciena WaveLogic 6 Extreme.

North America Holds 35.8% Share

North America is worth USD 6.22 billion in 2025 and USD 11.01 billion by 2035, a CAGR of 5.88%, and gains 1.6 points of share, the largest gain of any region. US broadband providers invested USD 89.60 billion in communications infrastructure in 2024, according to USTelecom.

Europe Holds 17.9% Share

Europe is worth USD 3.11 billion in 2025 and USD 4.89 billion by 2035, a CAGR of 4.62%. Connect Europe puts per-capita telecom investment at EUR 118 in Europe against EUR 217 in the United States.

Latin America Holds 4.1% Share

Latin America is worth USD 712.50 million in 2025 and USD 1.35 billion by 2035, a CAGR of 6.63%, with Brazil the largest country market in the region in the DC Market Insights allocation. Telxius is deploying Nokia 800G coherent pluggable optics across its terrestrial transport networks in Europe, the United States and Latin America.

Middle East and Africa Holds 3.6% Share

The Middle East and Africa is worth USD 625.61 million in 2025 and USD 1.41 billion by 2035, the fastest growth of any region at 8.49% a year. DC Market Insights expects Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to drive most of the growth as AI campuses are linked to each other and to subsea landing stations.

Country Analysis: Which Countries Spend the Most on Optical Networking?

The United States is the largest country market for optical networking at USD 5.54 billion in 2025, 31.9% of global value, followed by China at USD 3.93 billion (22.6%) and Japan at USD 799.40 million (4.6%). The 12 largest countries account for 81.8% of 2025 spending.

Rank	Country	Region	2025 (USD billion)	Share 2025	2035 (USD billion)	CAGR 2025-2035
1	United States	North America	5.54	31.9%	9.89	5.96%
2	China	Asia Pacific	3.93	22.6%	5.71	3.82%
3	Japan	Asia Pacific	0.80	4.6%	1.18	3.95%
4	Canada	North America	0.68	3.9%	1.12	5.14%
5	Germany	Europe	0.59	3.4%	0.91	4.45%
6	India	Asia Pacific	0.54	3.1%	1.44	10.35%
7	United Kingdom	Europe	0.52	3.0%	0.80	4.31%
8	South Korea	Asia Pacific	0.42	2.4%	0.65	4.50%
9	France	Europe	0.40	2.3%	0.62	4.46%
10	Brazil	Latin America	0.33	1.9%	0.62	6.48%
11	Australia	Asia Pacific	0.28	1.6%	0.50	6.06%
12	Saudi Arabia	Middle East and Africa	0.19	1.1%	0.47	9.44%

India is the fastest-growing large country market at 10.35% a year, ahead of Saudi Arabia at 9.44%, as new data center campuses and national backbones are built on 800G and 1.6T wavelengths. The country figures are a DC Market Insights allocation of the regional totals, weighted by each country’s estimated share of telecom and cloud capital spending.

Forecast Scenarios: How Could the 2035 Forecast Change?

The Optical Networking Market reaches USD 29.45 billion by 2035 in the base case, with a range of USD 24.79 billion to USD 34.22 billion across the low and high scenarios.

Scenario	Assumption from 2026	2035 (USD billion)	CAGR 2025-2035
Low	Cloud capital spending pauses for two years; telecom capital spending flat; faster price-per-bit decline	24.79	3.62%
Base	Cloud capital spending rises to about USD 1,161.42 billion by 2035; telecom capital spending grows 2% a year	29.45	5.41%
High	Multi-site AI training becomes the default design; telecom operators upgrade national backbones to 1.6T early	34.22	7.01%

Competitive Insights: Who Leads the Optical Networking Market?

• Huawei
• Ciena
• Nokia
• Cisco
• ZTE
• FiberHome
• 1FINITY (Fujitsu)
• NEC
• Adtran
• Ribbon Communications
• Marvell Technology
• Lumentum
• Coherent

In the DC Market Insights view, mergers and acquisitions activity, led by Nokia’s purchase of Infinera, has raised concentration in carrier and cloud optical networking. Nokia and Ciena each hold close to a fifth of the Optical Networking Market, and DC Market Insights estimates that the top three suppliers, Huawei, Nokia and Ciena, together hold about 60% (DC Market Insights estimate: Ciena’s Optical Networking segment revenue of USD 3.25 billion in fiscal 2025 and Nokia’s Optical Networks revenue of EUR 3.02 billion in 2025, converted at about USD 1.13 per euro, set against the USD 17.38 billion market). Ciena’s Optical Networking segment reached USD 1.19 billion in its fiscal third quarter of 2026, 71.3% of revenue. Nokia’s Optical Networks revenue grew 85% to EUR 3.02 billion in 2025 after the Infinera acquisition. DC Market Insights estimates Huawei’s optical sales within its ICT infrastructure business, which reported revenue of CNY 375.01 billion in 2025. Cisco took USD 9.30 billion of AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers in fiscal 2026 and reported growing demand for its Acacia coherent pluggables. Fujitsu announced in April 2025 that its network products business, mainly optical transmission equipment and O-RAN base stations, would be spun off as 1FINITY, a wholly owned subsidiary scheduled for formation on 1 July 2025. Adtran reported 2025 revenue of USD 1.08 billion, with optical networking revenue up 33% in the fourth quarter. In the DC Market Insights assessment, ZTE and FiberHome are the main suppliers in China alongside Huawei, NEC and Ribbon Communications focus on carriers and regional operators, and Marvell, Lumentum and Coherent supply coherent pluggables and optical components.

Recent Developments

• In January 2025, Zayo outlined plans to build more than 5,000 new long-haul fiber route miles in the United States to support AI workloads (Source: Data Center Dynamics report).
• In February 2025, Nokia completed its acquisition of Infinera (Source: Nokia press release).
• In April 2025, Fujitsu announced the spin-off of its network products business, mainly optical transmission equipment and O-RAN base stations, into 1FINITY, a wholly owned subsidiary scheduled for formation on 1 July 2025 (Source: Fujitsu press release).
• In September 2025, Ciena agreed to acquire Nubis Communications in an all-cash deal worth USD 270.00 million (Source: Data Centre Review report).
• In March 2026, Marvell introduced the COLORZ 1600 1.6T ZR and ZR+ pluggable, with customer sampling expected in the second half of 2026 (Source: Marvell press release).
• In September 2026, Telxius and Nokia announced the deployment of Nokia 800G coherent pluggable optics across Telxius’ terrestrial transport networks in Europe, the United States and Latin America (Source: Nokia press release).

We follow these deals, launches and capacity announcements as they happen in our data center industry updates.

Methodology: How We Built the Optical Networking Market Model

DC Market Insights built this market bottom-up from buyer budgets for 16 years (2020 to 2035). Telecom operator capital spending of about USD 302.00 billion in 2025 is anchored on USTelecom’s USD 89.60 billion for US broadband providers, Connect Europe’s EUR 64.60 billion for Europe and the reported 2025 capital expenditure of China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom (RMB 285.50 billion in total, converted at about RMB 7.19 per US dollar), with a DC Market Insights assumption of about USD 100.00 billion for the rest of the world. Cloud provider capital spending of about USD 456.26 billion is the reported 2025 spending of Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft, plus Oracle’s USD 21.22 billion in its fiscal year to May 2025, with about USD 75.00 billion assumed for other cloud providers. Each budget was multiplied by an optical intensity (3.20% for telecom operators and 1.30% for cloud providers in 2025), and enterprise, government and utility spending of USD 1.78 billion was added. The total was split by 5 components, 5 applications, 4 data rates, 4 end users and 5 regions, and every split sums to the market total. The result was checked top-down against the disclosed results of 4 listed suppliers: Ciena’s and Nokia’s optical revenues together equal USD 6.66 billion, or 38.3% of the modeled market, and Adtran’s and Huawei’s disclosures set the scale of the remaining suppliers. The analyst named on this page built the model, and the reviewer checked the arithmetic, the sources and the dates before publication.