In this paper, we compute the optimal slot width which provides a good trade-off between the blocking probability and network cost to attain spectral and cost-efficient solution for the next generation optical networks. Here we have determined the blocking performance by varying the slot width from 50 GHz down to 1.5625 GHz followed by the estimation of the network cost by taking into account various network elements viz., transponder, node equipment’s (OXC, SSS, splitter/combiner) and optical amplifiers. Further, an evaluation of the trade-off between blocking performance and network cost is carried out to get the optimal slot width.