In the mid 1990s, DWDM emerged as the killer solution for supporting long-haul transmission networks and, in the early 2000s, it also found widespread application in metro and regional networks. In both of these applications, cooled DWDM DFB lasers provide a cost effective solution as the cost of DWDM systems is amortized over a large number of customers served by these systems.

Access networks, on the other hand, require lower cost and lower capacity systems to meet market requirements, driven largely by customers’ willingness to pay for broadband services. The massive deployments of long-haul and metro networks in the past ten years has spawned significant new innovations in passive and active fiber component technology, droving costs down, and helping manufacturing processes to mature. However, because of their inherent manufacturing complexity, DWDM lasers have never reached the right price points to be considered as a viable solution for access networks.

Peleton`s MCLA product line is the only solution on the market allowing service providers to harness the benefits of DWDM for mass market applications.

Most agree that the demands placed on communications networks will increase dramatically in the next decade. Residential subscribers demand broadband solutions that provide media rich services. Similarly, business users are expecting broadband infrastructure to reliably connect their local area network to the internet backbone. Broadband service demands can only be met by fiber optics reaching all the way to the subscribers' premises. The biggest challenge is finding a cost-effective solution that supports today's services and facilitates the transition to the broadband era. DWDM has the potential to deliver flexible provisioning of protocol- and bit rate-transparent, data-centric services, along with the ability to offer new and higher-speed services at less cost.

Key applications for Peleton’s MCLA and Channel Control Equipment include: