Wideband chirped fiber gratings were used for dispersion compensation in a 32×10 Gb/s dense WDM system operating over a total bandwidth of 180 nm. Ten modules in two wavelength bands were used to transmit over 375 km of conventional fibers. The modules exhibited bandwidths of 6 nm and 12 nm, average insertion loss of 3.2 dB, average polarization mode dispersion (PMD) of 1.5 ps, and polarization dependent loss (PDL) of <0.3 dB.