I'm told the flow of traffic here at Globalcomm is lighter than attendees expected. But while vendors bemoan the amount of traffic on the show floor, they should be heartened by the fact that carriers are spending their time talking about the high flow of traffic in their networks.

AT&T, which begins a nationwide OC-768 upgrade this summer, is carrying about 5.4 petabits of traffic per business day, according to Eric Shepcaro, senior vice president of business development. And it will spend more than $8 billion on the network this year. Global Crossing carried nearly 300 million billable minutes of IP connections last month alone, an increase of 620% over May of last year.

One of the themes apparent in new product introductions here at the show is the graduation of Ethernet from a best-effort technology to one that maintains strict controls on quality of service and prioritizes traffic to allow over-subscription of networks, even as those networks carry fragile applications like voice and video.

Another is a string of new products in the reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) space. In that sphere, the news on Tuesday that Adva Optical Networking is acquiring Movaz Networks was a dramatic surprise. Other vendors are making their own ROADM-related announcements, though, including a new company launching at the show.

There's plenty of activity here at the show if you're looking for new products, new companies and new services, maybe less so if measured in footprints on the carpet.

E-mail me at egubbins@prismb2b.com.