Are WDM component needs for datacom different than for telecom?

In the last few years, wavelength division multiplexing has successfully penetrated the long-haul telephony infrastructure to the degree that some general agreement exists as to the associated component requirements. Although manufacturers still make primarily custom devices, these custom designs resemble each other more than they differ. As a result, manufacturers have been able to make the commitments that allow their technology to develop which, in turn, enable faster maturing of WDM systems. In this, the work on standardization has been quite helpful even though the stated purpose of ensuring interoperability of systems is far from realized. Now, the research community's attention is beginning to turn to new WDM markets, primarily access telephony, but also high-end datacom. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some early ideas on how component requirements might differ for these new markets. Of course, there has been much discussion about the general trends towards a blurring between datacom and telecom as Internet traffic becomes a significant fraction of the telephony load, and as voice/video real-time applications are of increasing interest for Internet and Web applications. However, these trends are likely to result in changes at higher layers than the physical layer so it is impossible to account for them except to note that perhaps WDM offers some flexibility to meet changing resource allocation needs in the future.