A dispersion compensation system includes one or more etalons optically coupled in series. The optical path length is used to achieves the desired dispersion compensation. In one example, at least some of the etalons are tunable in OPL and have a non-tunable front reflective interface. The dispersion compensation system can be tuned, for example to compensate for different amounts of dispersion, different combinations of dispersion offset and dispersion slope and/or manufacturing variations. In another example, the etalons all have a non-tunable front reflective interface. The optical path length is selected to compensate for chromatic dispersion that varies from one wavelength channel to the next.