Abstract
We study the interplay between amplifier noise and birefringent disorder in the case of strongly nonlinear (soliton) type of transmission in optical fibers. Assuming both noise and disorder to be weak, we evaluate the probability distribution function (PDF) of the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) for the values of BER that are much larger than the typical (average) value. The PDF tail that describes probability of the system outage shows log-normal shape, strongly dependent on the fiber length. We also discuss a simple timing shift technique capable of the outage compensation.