Past, present, and future of customer-owned optical networks

Customer owned networks first started about 10 years ago when organizations started purchasing dark fiber in the metro area. More recently they are now starting to extend their customer owned optical networks greater distance through the purchase of point to point wavelengths and/or construction of dedicated DWDM networks. Customer owned fiber is dark fiber that is dedicated to a single customer and where the customer is responsible for attaching the telecommunications equipment and lasers to "light" the fiber. Professional 3rd party companies who specialize in deploying customer owned dark fiber systems take care of the actual installation of the fiber and also maintain it on behalf of the customer. This paper gives an overview of the technology involved in customer owned networks along with possible applications and deployments.