Applications and ResearchResearchers from the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics at the University of Southampton have demonstrated a new improvement in hollow-core fibre performance. The research team reckons the demo underlines the technology’s potential to soon eclipse current optical fibres. Hollow-core fibres replace conventional glass cores with gas or a vacuum to enable a range of […]
Technologies and ProductsHigh speed data movement interconnect specialist Inphi Corp has announced it is sampling its new Spica™ 800G 7 nm PAM4 DSP, along with its new Porrima™ Gen3 Single-Lambda PAM4 platform. The new DSP product is billed as the world’s first 800 Gbps or 8 x 100 Gbps PAM4 DSP to enable 800G optical transceiver modules […]
News and BusinessRecent North American optical sales were up more than 25% for 4Q19 and 10% for all of 2019 according to the most recent Transport Hardware Report from research firm Cignal AI. The North American packet market for access and aggregation switching devices also grew strongly in the fourth quarter as demand for edge and core […]
News and BusinessJapan’s newest mobile carrier, Rakuten Mobile, will deploy Nokia’s 1830 Photonic Service Switch to power its reconfigurable photonic mesh mobile backhaul network. The carrier is set to launch the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualised cloud-native 5G mobile network, and the deployment of Nokia’s coherent and optical component technologies is designed to enable the ready growth of network bandwidth […]
News and BusinessOn the heels of its 2019 debut, the Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable Double Density 800 (QSFP-DD800) Multi Source Agreement (MSA) group has released a new hardware specification for the QSFP-DD800 transceiver form factor. The MSA group was formed to advance the development of high-speed, double-density QSFP modules which support 800 Gbits/s connectivity, and includes […]
News and BusinessThe UK Fibre Connectivity Forum (UKFCF) has this month said it is looking to collaborate with construction firms, property developers, planners and landlords to drive efficiencies into delivering on the UK government’s targets to be Gigabit capable by 2025. The UKFCF believes that now that the switch to full fibre from the ageing copper network […]
News and BusinessThe European Telecommunications Standards Institute has launched ETSI ISG F5G, a new group dedicated to specifying the fibre-heavy, fifth generation of fixed network. The standards body notes that society is entering an exciting new era of communications, and fixed networks play an essential role in that evolution alongside, and in cooperation with, mobile networks. Building on […]
Applications and ResearchResearchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology have completed a five-year research project looking at how to make fibre optic communications systems more energy efficient. Among their proposals are: smart, error-correcting data chip circuits, which they refined to be multiple times less energy consumptive; at a systemic level, the use of optical frequency combs instead […]
News and BusinessThe EQT Infrastructure IV fund and Canadian pensions concern OMERS have announced an agreement to jointly acquire Deutsche Glasfaser from KKR Infrastructure and Reggeborgh. Deutsche Glasfaser, said to be the fastest growing German provider of FTTH Gigabit Internet connections, with more than 600,000 household and 5,000 businesses connected, will be combined with EQT Infrastructure IV […]
News and BusinessFollowing a two-month in-depth investigation, the European Commission (EC) has issued a veto decision, blocking Swedish regulator Post-och telestyrelsen (PTS), from adopting its market review determination. With this decision, the Commission objects to PTS’s finding of a national market for wholesale local access to fibre networks, concluded by PTS despite very significant variations in competitive […]
News and BusinessAs part of preparations for the next national cycle of fixed market analyses (2020 to 2023), French regulator Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) is considering broadband sector changes, and has launched a new public consultative process. ARCEP is now embarking on a further stage of the review process of the […]
Technologies and ProductsBGN Technologies, the technology transfer company of Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev, Israel, has introduced what it says is the first all-optical “stealth” encryption technology. This is reckoned to be significantly more secure and private for highly-sensitive cloud computing and datacentre network transmission. “Today, information is still encrypted using digital techniques, although most data are transmitted over distance […]
News and BusinessTelia Carrier, operating its ground-breaking secure Internet backbone, has launched the first-of-its-kind, full-scale, 400GE-ready network backed by Cisco cloud-scale routing technology. The launch follows Telia Carrier’s successful deployment of more than 10,000 new 100GE ports during 2019 using the same platform. A rise in Telia Carrier’s customer base, exceeding 2,000 customers in more than 120 countries, has […]
News and BusinessOptical services platform the EllaLink Group has inked an agreement with Portuguese public telecommunications network operator RENTELECOM to use dark fibres in Portugal and Spain for datacentre interconnection. EllaLink will integrate RENTELECOM’s fibres in its optical platform to enhance its services from Sines to Madrid and Lisbon. The protected fibre ring will connect all the major datacentres […]
News and BusinessNEC Corporation and its subsidiary OCC Corporation have completed full qualification of subsea repeaters and optical cable containing up to 20 fibre pairs (40 fibres). NEC notes that this is a 25% improvement in fibre count over 16 fibre pair systems it has previously built, and that the development allows cable owners worldwide to construct […]
News and BusinessWholesale and corporate ICT service provider Angola Cables is trialling Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine (PSE-3) chipset for the first direct optical connection between the USA and Africa.. The new route is designed to provide direct, low-latency trans-Atlantic routing and greatly simplify the turn-up of services to better serve rapidly growing data consumption markets in Africa. […]
Technologies and ProductsHybrid photonic IC-based module and subsystem specialist NeoPhotonics Corp has sampled its new 400ZR ClearLight™ OSFP transceiver to a leading but unnamed cloud-related customer. The product utilises NeoPhotonics’ Silicon Photonics Coherent Optical Subassembly (COSA) and low power consumption, ultra-narrow linewidth Nano-ITLA tunable laser, along with 7 nm node DSP technology. This combination provides full 400ZR […]
News and BusinessHomes and businesses across the UK are set to benefit from much faster and more reliable fibre broadband under major proposals set out by national communications regulator Ofcom. Ofcom is proposing new, flexible regulation that will help fuel a full-fibre future for the whole of the UK. In 2017, the regulator set out a range […]
Technologies and ProductsHybrid photonic IC-based module and subsystem specialist NeoPhotonics Corp has shipped its new 400G-capable ClearLight™ CFP2-DCO transceiver for end-customer trials. The device is billed as the industry’s first transceiver module able to deliver as much as 32 Tbps of capacity per fibre – significantly higher than today’s 200G CFP2-DCO capacity, or the emerging 400G CFP2-DCO […]
News and BusinessGerman cartel authority the Bundeskartellamt has decided to approve the JV plans of Deutsche Telekom and EWE AG to expand fibre optic networks to end-customers in the northwestern region of the country. The JV – Glasfaser NordWest -will be obliged to add 300,000 end user fibre connections over the next four years. Longer term, the […]