Optical Connections

BTI Systems has announced a simplification to the provisioning and management of optical services in the metro network. The Ottawa-headquartered company has added what it dubs a “dynamic optical layer” to its BTI 7000 packet optical platform to enable metro services without requiring detailed networking planning. The BTI 7000 platform supports 40 DWDM channels and an advanced reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM).
 
By Roy Rubenstein
 
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Now in its sixth year, ECOC’s Market Focus forum is bigger and better than ever before, say the show organisers. A look at the schedule for the event indicates what are going to be the major topics of discussion for ECOC this year.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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US service provider Verizon is claiming another 100G first, with the deployment of 100G on an ultra-long-haul section of the company’s US backbone – essentially delivering on a promise made earlier this year.  More significantly, the company says it plans to increase the number of routes using 100G technology to 10 by the end of the year, rather than just the three that were announced back in March.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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 A consortium of over 30 US universities hopes to accelerate deployment of high-speed networks in university towns.  By collaborating on this effort, Gig.U members aim “to lower costs for themselves and improve the business economics for the private sector entities interested in working with the members, while enhancing the benefits gained from shared information and experience”.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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In recent years, gains in optical transmission system capacity have been slow.  That’s because the capacity of current optical fibres is within a factor of two of their fundamental physical limits, bounded by the Shannon limit and optical nonlinearities. Now an €11.8m European-funded research project is investigating ways to boost system capacity by an order of magnitude using specialist multimode optical fibres.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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Avago Technologies has begun manufacturing an SFP+ module supporting the latest speed 16 Gigabit Fibre Channel standard. The introduction of the SFP+ doubles the traffic throughput of storage systems.
 
By Roy Rubenstein
 
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ADVA Optical Networking has launched a 100Gbps transmission card designed for metro applications. The firm claims it is an industry first: a direct-detection-based 100Gbps design using four 28Gbps channels. The metro card will be used to connect enterprise data centers and to transport 100 Gigabit Ethernet traffic between core routers.
 
By Roy Rubenstein
 
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JDSU has integrated a tunable laser into an SFP+, the smallest pluggable optical transceiver form factor. The tunable SFP+ will span the C-Band and support 50GHz channel spacings. JDSU is demonstrating the tunable SFP+ to customers and expects the module to enter production in the next year.
 
By Roy Rubenstein
 
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Infinera is on target with development of its 500 Gbps photonic integrated circuit (PIC) judging from the news that the device has been running in a field trial with African carrier Seacom.  The PIC is the crucial technology inside the company’s much anticipated 100Gbps coherent system, which is expected to reach the market by July 2012.
 
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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The 10x10 MSA consortium has announced the public availability of 10km and 40km transceiver specifications that will allow it to expand into campus and metro applications.  The group says it was compelled to develop a new specification for longer reach applications to “eliminate the need for custom or proprietary solutions, while also reducing both development and manufacturing cost”.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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Automated fibre management solutions for data centres and access networks represent a growing market.  FiberZone Networks is well positioned to tap into this opportunity thanks to a $12m (€8.4m) round of financing.
 
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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State-owned telco P&T Luxembourg has announced that it will be launching commercial fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) services under the brand “LuxFibre” in September.  When the offer is launched, around 85% of households will be able to connect at speeds of up to 30 Mbps and around 25% at speeds of up to 100 Mbps.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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The global optical network equipment market jumped 13% in the second quarter of 2011, following an 11% decline in the first quarter, according to the latest figures from Infonetics Research.  The long term trend remains positive, with the market being up 21% in the second quarter 2011 compared to the same quarter a year ago.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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In the August 5 issue of Science, researchers lead by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, describe a new technique to isolate light signals on a silicon chip.   The work is an important step towards creating an optical diode using material that is compatible with photonic integrated circuits.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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ClariPhy Communications will start volume production of its 40 Gbps coherent IC by the end of September.  The fabless semiconductor company raised $14 million in June, part of which will fund the move to production.

By Roy Rubenstein
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A project to enable one terabit transmission over an optical wavelength has been announced by a consortium of Israeli companies and universities. The Tera Santa Consortium will develop a terabit optical platform using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) .  
 By Roy Rubenstein
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Verizon and NEC Corporation of America have demonstrated simultaneous transmission of 100Gbps, 450Gbps and 1Tbps optical signals over an installed fibre network.  The results of the trial, which was performed last year on 3,560 kilometres (2,212 miles) of fibre of Verizon's network in the Dallas area, were outlined in a post-deadline paper at the recent OFC/NFOEC Conference in Los Angeles.
 
By Pauline Rigby
 
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Xilinx, a company best known for its programmable logic devices, has purchased Belfast, Northern Ireland, start-up Omiino for an undisclosed amount.  The start-up develops silicon intellectual property for packet-optical transport network (P-OTN) applications at speeds up to 100Gbps.
 
 
By Pauline Rigby
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The final piece of bankrupt telecoms equipment company Nortel has come up for sale – its vast patent portfolio.  Google has entered a stalking horse sale agreement with Nortel that could see it acquire all the firm’s remaining telecoms and technology patents for $900m (€622m) in cash.

By Pauline Rigby
 
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Optical components maker Finisar has increased its stake in Norwegian firm Ignis ASA, and has put in an offer to buy the remaining shares for a cash consideration of NOK 8 (€1.02) per share.  However, it’s not the only company interested in buying the firm.
 
 
By Pauline Rigby
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Optical start-up Kaiam made its debut by announcing Series A funding and demonstrating its first products – 40Gbps optical transmitter and receiver subassemblies for QSFP modules.  The start-up says it has a novel way of aligning the individual components on a hybrid photonic integrated circuit, which delivers high manufacturing yield, high performance and low cost.
 
By Pauline Rigby
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The latest 100 Gigabit ASICs from Ciena support programmable modulation schemes that trade transmission speed for optical reach. The WaveLogic coherent optical processors are already shipping inside Ciena’s ActivFlex 6500 packet-optical platform and will be added to the ActivSpan 4200 advanced services platform in the coming months.
 
By Roy Rubenstein
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Optical transceiver sales worldwide will exceed US $3 bilion in 2011 (€2.11 billion), an increase of 10%, according to market research firm LightCounting. Growth will be slower than 2010, however, when optical transceiver sales grew 35%. Market research firm Ovum reports similar market dynamics for optical components where the global market also grew by 35% in 2010 to reach $5.6 billion.
 
 
By Roy Rubenstein
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Components vendor JDSU announced that shipments of its tunable XFP products exceeded those of its legacy 300-pin transponder for the first time in financial Q2 2011 (October to December 2010).  This marks the beginning of a major shift in the optical transponder market as larger, legacy form factors are replaced with pluggable modules about one quarter of the size.
 
By Pauline Rigby.
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Deutsche Telekom says it will begin to expand its fibre-optic network this year.  The company expects to deploy FTTH in 10 cities in 2011, with the aim of passing 160,000 homes by the end of the year.    This is the first step in the operators’ plans to connect 10% of all households in Germany within five years, as announced at the end of last year.
By Pauline Rigby
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An explosion of 100Gbps field trial activity, product announcements and commercial shipments is coming in 2011, signalling the start of serious commercial activity in 2012, according to a new report from Heavy Reading. Now is the time for suppliers to engage their customers about 100G products and roadmaps, says Sterling Perrin, senior analyst at Heavy Reading and author of the report.
 
By Pauline Rigby.
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Over the last few years, Google has been doing the conference circuit to talk about its technological desires, to make sure the market responds to its need.  And the Optical Society of America (OSA) Executive Forum, a one-day seminar that precedes OFC/NFOEC, was no exception, with Google senior network architect Bikash Koley appearing twice.
By Pauline Rigby.
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Infinera has given first details of its terabit coherent detection photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The transmitter and receiver PIC pair implement ten 100Gbps channels over a fibre.  Infinera has also demonstrated its 5x100Gbps PICs carrying traffic on Interoute Communications’ pan-European network.
By Roy Rubenstein
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ADVA Optical Networking has entered the long-haul market by enhancing the wavelength provisioning and performance of its established FSP 3000 platform. Three technology components – an advanced reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM), 100 Gpbs transport and an advanced control plane - have been added to enable more flexible provisioning of high-speed DWDM lightpaths.
By Roy Rubenstein.
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