Methods and apparatus for managing the effects of dispersion in an optical transport system in which some of the system's nodes are connected to one another via inhomogeneous fiber-optic links. In one embodiment, an optical transmitter is configured to apply electronic and/or optical dispersion pre-compensation in the amount selected to cause the peak-to-average-power ratio of the optical signal in the lower-dispersion portion of the link to be relatively low (e.g., close to a minimum value). Advantageously, such dispersion pre-compensation tends to significantly reduce, e.g., in terms of the bit-error rate, the directional anisotropy exhibited by optical transmissions through the inhomogeneous fiber-optic links.