- Cisco’s new optical platforms and pluggables aim to increase fiber density for data center interconnects and long-haul networks
- Cisco, Ciena and Nokia account for about 90% of cloud optical transport systems, said Dell'Oro VP Jimmy Yu
- Rival Ciena recently launched its “hyper‑rail photonics” system, which also targets higher fiber density for scale‑across deployments
As data centers call for a lot more fiber to process AI workloads, Cisco is rolling out new optical technology that aims to help hyperscalers optimize amplifier space without overloading power.
Ahead of OFC 2026, Cisco introduced the Open Transport 3000 Series, a “multi-rail” open line system that can integrate multiple fibers into one amplifier and is designed for hyperscaler scale-across deployments, service providers and long-haul fiber operators, said Bill Gartner, SVP and General Manager of Cisco’s Optical Systems and Optics business.
“Some of these applications are talking about like 128 fibers passing through a repeater site,” he told Fierce, noting Open Transport 3000 supports C-band spectrum as well as the C&L band. The latter combines two bands to double the capacity of a single fiber.
Other items Cisco is serving up on its optical platter include an upgraded NCS 1014 multi-haul platform that boasts 12.8-terabit capacity in a single rack unit line card and compatibility with 800G ZR/ZR+ optics.
On the pluggable side, the vendor unveiled the QSFP-DD pluggable Protection Switch Module, which can switch traffic upon fault detection in “less than 50 milliseconds,” according to Cisco’s blog.
Gartner said the pluggable can be inserted into a router, thus eliminating the need for chassis-based transponders.
“We’ve now got 450 customers, including all the hyperscalers that are deploying pluggable coherent optics in lieu of transponders,” he said, adding pluggables are a “significantly growing” business for Cisco that also “cannibalizes” some of its competitors.
Cisco is going harder on optical as it faces intense competition in the AI back-end market from Arista, Nokia, Nvidia and others. At Cisco Live in February, the company introduced a G300 switching chip designed to optimize traffic between AI clusters.
Analysts: Cisco strengthens optical edge vs. Ciena
For optical transport sales to cloud providers, Cisco along with Ciena and Nokia have a combined 90% market share, Dell’Oro VP Jimmy Yu told Fierce. And he thinks it won’t be long before Cisco’s competitors launch similar offerings that connect GPU clusters between data centers separated by more than 100 kilometers.
In a similar vein, Ciena this week introduced what it calls “hyper-rail photonics,” new amplifier configurations that tout “up to 32x” the fiber density of standard solutions.
Cisco is claiming its multi-rail line system offers a 75% power reduction and an 80% decrease in rack space, both of which would be “a big help to hyperscalers that are watching every wattage,” said Yu.
Kyle Hollasch, Cignal AI Lead Analyst of Optical Transport & Routing, told Fierce Cisco’s new platform will compete head-to-head with Ciena’s, “but Cisco's deep Silicon Valley relationships and trusted partner status in optics make it highly likely that it will be a part of hyperscalers' multi-vendor approach to networking.”
Cisco’s move to “massively-densif[y]” in-line amplifiers addresses a common pain point of traditional optical transport gear, which “has never been designed to handle the hundreds of optical fibers that hyperscalers plan to light up,” he said.
The vendor already supplies optics and switches to support more power-efficient DCIs, such as the Acacia 800 ZR+ module and the P200 routing chip launched in October, Hollasch noted. “So it makes sense to complete the end-to-end scale-across networking stack with a line system.”
Updated to clarify Cisco, Ciena and Nokia have a 90% market share of optical transport systems for cloud providers.