Market Focus 2012

Fabless semiconductor company Netronome has demonstrated a flow processor chip implementing the OpenFlow protocol, an open standard implementation for software-defined networking (SDN).

By Roy Rubenstein

EU budget cuts hit investment in broadband infrastructure

Investing in broadband infrastructure is not a priority for Europe, judging by recent developments at the European Commission. The Commission had planned to invest €9.2 billion in broadband and digital services, but budget cuts have reduced that amount to just €1 billion.

By Pauline Rigby

Alcatel-Lucent activates 400G wavelength for France Telecom

France Telecom-Orange and Alcatel-Lucent claim to have deployed “the world’s first optical link with a capacity of 400 Gbps per wavelength” on a live fibre-optic link between Paris and Lyon. This connection represents an important milestone for long-distance terrestrial network technology, the companies say.

By Pauline Rigby

Silica microwires: the answer to optical interconnects?

Silica microwires, if they could be manufactured or self-assembled in place, have the potential to operate as tiny optical interconnects, says a team of researchers from Australia and France. By carefully controlling the shape of water droplets with an ultraviolet laser, the researchers have found a way to encourage silica nanoparticles to self-assemble into uniform silica wires.

By Pauline Rigby

Huawei solves FTTH installation problems with ‘fibre to the door’

Huawei has introduced a new access network architecture that it says will overcome the installation difficulties in traditional fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) or fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) scenarios. The Chinese vendor has introduced what it calls fibre-to-the-door (FTTD), which provides broadband at speeds up to 1 Gbps by reusing existing twisted-pair or coaxial cables in the final drop.

By Pauline Rigby

Alcatel-Lucent achieves dual-carrier Terabit transmission

Alcatel-Lucent's research arm, Bell Labs, has used high-speed electronics to enable Terabit long-haul transmission using two optical carriers only.

By Roy Rubenstein

OIF to address 400G long-haul modules and software-defined networking

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) Physical and Link Layer Working Group has started work on a module interface implementation agreement for 400-Gbps long-haul transmission. Meanwhile, the OIF's Carrier Working Group is being tasked with determining how software-defined networking (SDN) will impact the transport network.

By Roy Rubenstein

Optical transport market will grow to $13Bn in 2017

The Dell'Oro Group forecasts that the global optical transport market will grow to $13 billion (€9.6 billion) in 2017, equating to a 10-percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

By Roy Rubenstein

EZchip redefines the role of the network processor

EZchip Semiconductor has announced a class of network processor capable of performing traditional data plane processing as well as higher layer networking tasks.

By Roy Rubenstein

NeoPhotonics to acquire Lapis Semiconductor for IC expertise

NeoPhotonics, an optical components manufacturer, has agreed to acquire the semiconductor optical components business unit of Lapis Semiconductor, which develops lasers, drivers, and detectors for high speed 100G applications. Lapis Semiconductor is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rohm in Japan.

By Pauline Rigby

Irish lead ‘DISCUS’ project to develop long-reach PONs

A three-year pan-European research project called DISCUS has been awarded €8.1 million in funding under the European Union 7th Framework Programme. The main objective of DISCUS is to produce an end-to-end network architecture based on long-reach passive optical networks (PONs) that scales economically when sustained customer bandwidths grow by three orders of magnitude or more compared to today’s rates over DSL.

By Pauline Rigby

NEC, Corning achieve petabit optical transmission

As the optical industry approaches the fundamental physical limits of optical transmission, researchers are exploring new ways to increase capacity by using multi-core fibre (MCF). Now NEC Corporation of America and Corning Inc. say they have set a new transmission record by sending data at 1.05 Pbps (1015 bits per second) over a novel optical fibre containing 14 cores.

By Pauline Rigby

Volex buys active optical cable technology from AppliedMicro

Interconnect specialist Volex says it has acquired active optical technology from Applied Micro Circuits Corp. for approximately $2 million (€1.5 million).

By Pauline Rigby

LightCounting: Optical transceiver market to grow 50% by 2017

The global optical transceiver market will grow strongly over the next five year to total US $5.1 billion (€3.8 billion) in 2017, from $3.4 billion (€2.6 billion) in 2012. So claims market research company LightCounting, in its latest telecom and datacom forecast.

By Roy Rubenstein

Alcatel-Lucent gets optical switch technology with Capella acquisition

Alcatel-Lucent has acquired Capella Intelligent Subsystems, the wavelength-selective switch (WSS) company. WSS subsystems are used at the heart of reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs) to switch and monitor light at metro network nodes.

By Roy Rubenstein

Superchannel ROADM the goal for European research project

Flexible switching of high-capacity traffic carried over superchannel wavelengths is the goal of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) research project.

By Roy Rubenstein

400G emerges as the next logical step for Ethernet

The optical industry loves a good debate about standards! The current generation of Ethernet standards was controversial, being the first where two standards – 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet – were developed simultaneously. The same debate about what the next generation of Ethernet should look like is now in full swing.

By Pauline Rigby

m2fx announce the appointment of Kannegieter as their premier distribution partner for the Benelux region

m2fx the inventors and manufacturers of Miniflex™ Fibre Cable, Microduct & Protection Tube have announced the appointment of Kannegieter as their premier distribution partner for the Benelux region, providing a full stocking and technical support partnership to the regional Optical Fibre market.

ECOC Exhibition Visitor pre-registrations dramatically rise and Market Focus speakers are confirmed

Next month’s ECOC (European Conference on Optical Communications) Exhibition, is already set to be smashing record highs, with visitor registrations already up by 42%, exhibition stand bookings on the increase and a speaker line-up for the Market Focus resembling a “who’s who” of the industry.

AppliedMicro unveils 100Gbps CMOS multiplexer chip

AppliedMicro has announced the first CMOS merchant multiplexer chip for 100Gbps coherent optical transmission. The S28032 device supports dual polarisation, quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK) and has a power consumption of 4W, half that of current multiplexer chip designs implemented in BiCMOS.

By Roy Rubenstein

Cortina Systems unveils multi-channel electronic dispersion compensation chip

Cortina Systems has announced an electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) chip that supports eight duplex 10Gbps links. The CS4342 is suited for use with optical modules and on line cards to counter the effect of transmission distortion where a bit's energy leaks into one or more adjacent bits.

By Roy Rubenstein

Google Fiber opens its order book

Google Fiber – the search giant’s hotly anticipated FTTH project in Kansas City – is now taking orders for service on its network. The network isn’t fully built yet, but that’s kind of the point. Google will use the registration information to work out where demand is greatest, and connect up homes in those neighbourhoods first.

By Pauline Rigby