U.S.-based optical components company Kaiam Corp. is moving its production facilities to Scotland from China. The move is expected to create 103 new jobs in Livingston, Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond said. The project is being supported by a Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grant of £850,000 from the development agency Scottish Enterprise. Kaiam develops optical components […]
Global deployments of wireless broadband access systems now account for a significance slice of the optical components and module market, claims LightCounting. The market research firm reports that sales will surpass $500 million this year, while the total Ethernet transceiver market will reach $1.3 billion in 2014. Sales of 3Gbps and 6Gbps optical transceivers connecting […]
Once a staple item on the WDM equipment manufacturer’s shopping list, thin-film filters (TFFs) will be superseded by integrated technologies in next-generation optical equipment. Perhaps that explains why Oclaro has decided to get out of the TFF business. Oclaro says it has completed the sale of its Santa Rosa thin film filter business to Photop […]
Padtec S.A., an optical systems vendor based in Brazil, and ClariPhy Communications, a developer of systems on chip (SoCs) for optical networking, have entered into a strategic partnership to develop and deploy 100G and 200G coherent optical transport systems to address the “tremendous data traffic growth” in the Americas and other regions. Padtec […]
Dr. Andrew Rickman, founder of Bookham Technology (now Oclaro), has always had silicon photonics in the cross hairs. Now, he has reappeared on the optical scene as chairman and CEO of UK-based silicon photonics start-up Rockley Photonics. The start-up has closed its Series A funding round following what the company says were “high […]
The number of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fibre to the building (FTTB) subscribers continues to grow steadily in Europe, according to the latest market research presented at the FTTH Conference 2014 in Stockholm, Sweden. However, the region has a long way to go before it can be considered a mature market. The total number of FTTH/B […]
Ericsson and Ciena have signed a global strategic agreement that provides Ericsson with Ciena’s optical networking technology, while Ciena benefits from Ericsson’s broad service provider relationships. In particular, Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent optical processor will be integrated into a module and added to Ericsson’s Smart Service Routers, while Ericsson will resell Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical […]
The market for 400G optical transport equipment is expected to reach $528 million (€386 million) in 2019, according to the latest report from the market research firm Communications Industry Researchers (CIR). The 400G market is emerging now. Last year Orange and Alcatel-Lucent announced what they claim is the first live deployment of 400G […]
In January, test and measurement specialist Tektronix, Inc. bought Picosecond Pulse Labs for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 1980 as a spin-off from the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST), Picosecond Pulse Labs decided that its expertise in metrology might give it a head start in the emerging high-speed optical communications market. In 2001, the […]
A €30 million centre for photonic integration has been set up in Ireland. The centre brings together 100 researchers and is being led by the Tyndall National Institute working with University College Cork, Cork Institute of Technology and Dublin City University. The new Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre will focus on developing photonic […]
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) says G.fast, the new standard that will enable access network speeds of up to 1Gbps over copper telephone cable, is on track for approval by April 2014. The physical-layer protocol aspects of G.fast defined by Recommendation ITU-T G.9701 “Fast Access to Subscriber Terminals – Physical layer specification” have reached the […]
The general public would rather have superfast broadband than better airports or railways, according to the results of a poll commissioned by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET). Out of 2,011 adults surveyed in December 2013, 17 percent thought that building new airports would benefit the UK economy while only 12 percent […]
Finisar Corporation is to acquire u²t Photonics AG for approximately $20 million (€14.6 million) in cash. Finisar will also assume a net debt of approximately $7 million (€5.1 million). u²t Photonics is a supplier of high-speed indium-phosphide photo-detectors and integrated coherent receivers used for 100G systems and modules. The German company had revenues of $33 million (€24.2 million) […]
The deals are getting bigger. In December, optical components developer Avago Technologies agreed to buy semiconductor and software company LSI in a cash deal worth $6.6 billion. The acquisition creates a “highly diversified semiconductor market leader with approximately $5 billion in annual revenues by adding enterprise storage to Avago’s existing wired infrastructure, wireless […]
Huawei says it will provide equipment for a 400-Gbps WDM network based on a proprietary Optical Transport Network (OTN) scheme while separately it has demonstrated single-carrier 400G optical transmission using advanced signal processing techniques. Huawei is delpoying the 400G WDM metro network technology for Telefonica Chile to interconnect data centres in Santiago and support the […]
Network dynamics are shifting, with more data traffic staying in metropolitan access and aggregation networks instead of traversing the core, according to a new study by Bell Labs, the R&D arm of French systems vendor Alcatel-Lucent. The study, entitled: “Metro Network Traffic Growth: An Architecture Impact Study,” indicated that traffic from video services […]
Compass-EOS has closed a $42 million (€31 million) round of funding. The latest round of investment takes the total amount of funding raised by the start-up to over $162 million (€120 million). Investors in the latest round include Comcast Ventures and Cisco Systems. The Israeli start-up launched its r10004 IP core router in March […]
The market for 100G optical transport equipment has been growing slightly faster than Internet bandwidth. Optical equipment vendors should continue to overinvest, however, because the industry should expect another downturn. That’s the conclusion of the latest update from market research firm LightCounting. According to the firm’s quarterly sales database released along with its Market Update […]
Communications semiconductor manufacturer Mindspeeed Technologies has entered into an agreement to be acquired by M/A-COM Technology Solutions in a deal valued at $272 million. MACOM will acquire Mindspeed for $5.05 a share, nearly a 70% premium to its closing share price of $3.04 on November 4. This adds up to a transaction value of […]
System vendors Infinera and Brocade working with ESnet – the US Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network that operates a 100G network linking research centres and universities and undertakes network R&D – have used software-defined networking (SDN) technology to provision and optimise traffic across several networking layers. Infinera and ESnet demonstrated OpenFlow provisioning […]