Regarding cable spending, keep in mind that, as mentioned in the earnings conference call, INFN's largest customer in Q3 was a cable company. Also keep in mind that, as stated in the Oct 27 press release, Infinera has already won six customers for the new ATN platform, including one of the top five US cable operators.

Regarding telco spending, check out comments from JDSU reported in the current issue of Barron's. JDSU CEO Tom Waechter said after the earnings report last Thursday that demand from North American carriers is improving, with European telcos not far behind. Waechter said that JDS Uniphase is seeing "very strong demand," and that "network operators are starting to spend again."

Network traffic growth continued without much of a slowdown during the recession. Since growth of network capacity did slow quite a bit, network operators are now going to have to play catch up and add more capacity.
Byron