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Welcome

The ECOC Exhibition is the largest European optical communications event and the meeting place for everyone in the fibreoptic communication technology industry. If you are a manufacturer, supplier or service provider of optical comms products and services, you are guaranteed to meet and interact with your most active prospects at ECOC 2012.

The ECOC Exhibition is free to attend and registration is now open.
Location & Times

Destination Amsterdam RAI

ECOC 2012 will be held in Amsterdam. Each and every year, Amsterdam RAI bids a warm welcome to more than two million visitors. The combination of excellent service, perfect accessibility and the exciting city of Amsterdam for business and pleasure, is what makes Amsterdam RAI unique.

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Find out more about the FTTx Centre and the new Zones for 2012

Optical Connections

Russian investment firm backs NeoPhotonics

A Russian sovereign technology fund has acquired $40 million (€31.4 million) worth of newly-issued common shares in the photonic integrated subsystem developer NeoPhotonics. The purchase price represented a 78% premium over the company's share price at the time the deal was announced.

By Pauline Rigby

Agilent buys T&M business from Centellax

“Eleven years ago, former Agilent Technologies engineer Julio Perdomo left Sonoma County's largest high-tech manufacturer to launch his own startup. On Friday, he sold a chunk of it back to his former employer,” writes the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California, where the start-up is based.

By Pauline Rigby

Fujikura buys Nistica as the WSS market heats up

Fujikura Ltd. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Nistica, a wavelength-selective switch (WSS) developer, for an undisclosed sum.

By Pauline Rigby

ZTE leads in global PON OLT deployments

ZTE shipped 1.8 million passive optical network (PON) optical line terminals (OLTs) in 2011 to become the leading supplier with 41 percent of the global market, according to Ovum. The market research firm also ranks ZTE as the second largest supplier of PON optical network terminals (ONT) in 2011, with 28 percent global market share.

By Roy Rubenstein

FSAN evaluates options for next-generation PON

The Full Service Access Network (FSAN) industry group is close to finalising the optical access technology that will follow 10-Gbps GPON, or XG-PON.

By Roy Rubenstein

Will there be a glut of submarine cable capacity?

There has been a boom in submarine cable construction globally, according to the latest data from TeleGeography’s Global Bandwidth Research Service. In 2010 and 2011, 19 systems costing an aggregate $3.7 billion (€2.8 billion) were launched, and the pace of growth is increasing. Throughout 2012 and 2013, 33 new submarine cable systems are expected to be deployed at a projected total cost of $5.5 billion.

By Pauline Rigby

Broadcom buys PON chip vendor Broadlight

Broadcom is paying $195 million (€146 million) in cash to acquire passive optical network (PON) chip maker BroadLight plus up to $10 million more if performance targets are met.

By Pauline Rigby

Emcore sells VCSEL business to Sumitomo

EMCORE has reached an agreement to sell its VCSEL-based product lines to Sumitomo Electric Device Innovations USA (SEDU). The deal, valued at $17 million (€12.9 million) includes EMCORE’s parallel optical transceivers, active optical cables, and other VCSEL and photodiode components targeting applications in data centers and local area networks.

By Pauline Rigby

Bi-PON could reduce FTTH energy consumption tenfold

Alcatel-Lucent has proposed a new time-division multiplexed passive optical network (TDM-PON) protocol that could cut energy use in fibre to the home (FTTH) networks by a factor of 10 compared to current technologies.

By Pauline Rigby

100G coherent module market heats up

Finisar has demonstrated its first 100Gbps coherent transponder, a 5x7-inch module that meets the Optical Internetworking Forum's multi-source agreement (MSA) specification.

By Roy Rubenstein

Kotura enters the 100G market with its silicon photonics transceiver

Silicon photonics firm Kotura has unveiled its 100Gbps optical transceiver. Referred to as an optical engine, the 100Gbps chip is implemented as a 4x25Gbps design. The optical engine consumes 5W and has a reach of at least 10km, making it suitable for all likely requirements in the data centre including the 100 Gigabit Ethernet 100GBASE-LR4 standard.

By Roy Rubenstein

Huawei showcases novel petabit optical cross connect

Huawei has demonstrated a prototype optical switch that can scale to 10 petabits per second or 10 million Gbps. Dubbed the Petabit Packet Cross Connect (PPXC), the switching platform is aimed at metro and the data centre markets.

By Roy Rubenstein

Metro 100G direct detection gains momentum

An alternative 100Gbps transmission scheme, based on direct detection and tailored for metro and private networks, is being backed by more system and optical module vendors.

By Roy Rubenstein

Oclaro-Opnext merger to create new number two components vendor

Oclaro has announced its plan to merge with Opnext. The all-stock deal, valued at $177 million (€133 million), combines the fifth and sixth largest optical component players to create a company with revenues second only to Finisar. The deal is expected to be completed in the next 3-6 months.

By Roy Rubenstein

Ekinops introduces novel 20G transponder

Ekinops has launched a dual-10Gbps line-card transponder. The card is designed to further reduce the cost of 10Gbps optical transport, claims the French equipment maker.

By Roy Rubenstein

Infonetics: Optical network equipment market up 8% in 4Q11

Worldwide spending on optical equipment, including WDM and SONET/SDH, increased 8% in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to the previous quarter, reaching $3.6 billion, according to the latest Optical Network Hardware report by market research firm Infonetics Research.

By Pauline Rigby

Europe (still) needs to speed up on FTTH Europe (still) needs to speed up on FTTH

The annual publication of the European FTTH Rankings – a league table of nations where more than 1% of households subscribe to fibre connections – shows that deployment and adoption of FTTH are growing, but not as fast as policy makers or the industry would like.

By Pauline Rigby

Inphi and Neophotonics partner on 100G optical modules

High-speed semiconductor company Inphi has partnered with optical module vendor NeoPhotonics on development of 100G next-generation optics. The applications being targeted include high-density data centre and cloud computing applications as well as 100G optical transport.

By Pauline Rigby

Genexis expands with acquisition of PacketFront CPE business

Dutch-based customer premises equipment (CPE) specialist Genexis has been busy in the last few weeks. On 1 February, it acquired PacketFront’s CPE business unit for an undisclosed sum.

By Pauline Rigby

Tellabs looks to mobile backhaul and packet optical

Optical vendor Tellabs has started a restructuring process that will see it reorganise its operations around mobile backhaul and packet-optical transport. The company plans to cut 530 jobs and consolidate R&D sites as it aims to save $100 million in operating costs.

By Pauline Rigby

Oclaro samples 20 Gigabit VCSELs

Oclaro has sampled a 20Gbps vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). The device is aimed at next-generation optical interconnects for consumer markets. The VCSEL is also suitable for datacom applications such as 16 Gigabit Fibre Channel.

By Roy Rubenstein

Huawei boosts photonic integration know-how with CIP acquisition

Huawei has acquired UK photonic integration specialist, the Centre for Integrated Photonics (CIP), from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) for an undisclosed fee. The acquisition of what was once BT's fibre-optics group, gains the Chinese system vendor a wealth of optical component expertise as well as participation in several leading European Union R&D projects.

By Roy Rubenstein

Expect 2012 to be a year of change

Industry commentators – CEOs, executives and analysts – are upbeat about telecoms' prospects in 2012 while expecting the year to be one of change. As operators continue to struggle with traffic growth, the expectation is that network configuration and management must change. More intelligence and multi-layer optimisation will be needed in the network and even application awareness.

By Roy Rubenstein

Southern Cross picks Ciena for 40G subsea upgrade

Ciena has secured a major contract to upgrade capacity on the Southern Cross submarine cable in the South Pacific. The cable links California in the US with Australia and New Zealand stopping off at Hawaii and Fiji along the way.

By Pauline Rigby

Tera Santa Consortium targets terabit optical networking

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

Entering the Terabit Era: Verizon, NEC complete high-speed field trial

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

Xilinx buys optical transport chip start-up Omiino

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

Google kicks off bids for Nortel’s patent portfolio

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

Finisar plans to bring tunable lasers in-house with Ignis buy

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

Start-up Kaiam claims photonic integration breakthrough

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

Optical processors from Ciena deliver flexible modulation

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

Optical components and transceiver market growth to continue in 2011

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

JDSU: sales of tunable XFPs exceed 300-pin devices

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.

DT signals go for FTTH expansion

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

Heavy Reading: 2011 will be the year for 100G

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.

Google’s optical shopping list

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.

Infinera details terabit photonic chips

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

ADVA adds reach and agility to its optical platform

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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