Ciena eyes the treasure trove of BEAD money, gets into access business

Ciena is well known in the telecommunications space as an optical transport vendor, but when the company saw all the money becoming available from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, it wanted to get in on that action. About two years ago, the company made the decision to get into the fiber access business to homes and businesses. Recently Ciena CEO Gary Smith said that investments in fiber broadband access, fueled by "massive public funding around the world," are projected to grow the 10G and above PON market by a 55% CAGR to approximately $7 billion by 2027. To that end, Ciena was at the Fiber Broadband Association’s Fiber Connect conference, where the excitement around BEAD was high. Ciena has been supporting middle-mile and long-haul networks for many years, and Kevin Sheehan, Ciena’s CTO of the Americas, said access was “a natural extension” and “complementary to everything else Ciena does.” The company’s access offerings include optical network terminals (ONTs), optical line terminals (OLTs), routers and switches.