Lightconnect reports business growth
Lightconnect (Newark, CA), a supplier of components and modules for optical networks, has opened an office in Maryland to handle sales in the eastern United States and Canada and has signed new partnership agreements with several U.S. representative firms. The company has also raised $9 million in its third round of financing, bringing total investment above $34 million, and has increased production of its variable optical attenuators (VOAs) by 300% in the last quarter, in response to a surge in demand for the recently launched Fast VOA 4000 by several leading optical systems manufacturers.
Corvis and Celestica exchange vows
Corvis (Columbia, MD) has entered into a multiyear manufacturing outsourcing agreement with Celestica. Under the agreement, Celestica will become the exclusive manufacturer of Corvis' terrestrial optical networking products and sub-sea terminating equipment, and Corvis will immediately begin transitioning its module-level manufacturing capabilities to Celestica, offering Corvis the opportunity to streamline its manufacturing capabilities, improve overall manufacturing flexibility, and reduce costs.
EXFO purchases gnubi communications
To complement its protocol-layer testing product portfolio, EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering (Quebec City, Canada) has signed an agreement to purchase substantially all the assets of gnubi communications (Dallas, TX), a supplier of multichannel telecom and datacom testing solutions. The deal includes gnubi's technology, expertise, customer base and inventories, in a stock-and-cash deal that ranges between US$4.3 million and US$7.2 million.
Fiberspace consumes Tunable Photonics
Fiberspace (Woodland Hills, CA), has acquired the assets of Tunable Photonics (Altadena, CA). Fiberspace will offer Tunable Photonics' external and internal wavelength lockers and laser characterization system alongside its ultrastable tunable laser sources, support Tunable Photonics' relationships with existing customers, suppliers and partners, as well as obtain a sizable patent portfolio from Tunable Photonics, including some technology originating from NASA/Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.
iolon to supply Lucent with tunable lasers
iolon (San Jose, CA) the leading supplier of tunable optical devices, has signed a sourcing agreement with Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) for iolon's line of high-power, widely tunable external-cavity lasers. Under the agreement, Lucent will deploy iolon's tunable lasers in a dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) optical networking system. Utilizing the wideband tuning ability of the iolon laser, Lucent has plans to offer a 16-channel tunable system this fall.
Also in the news . . .
OpNext Inc. (Eatontown, NJ), is collaborating with Pine Photonics (Fremont, CA) in the recent introduction of a 1550-nm XENPAK-compliant transceiver module for 10 Gigabit Ethernet transmissions over distances of 40 km. . . . Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) has announced a series of optical contracts with a combined total of $15 million to supply state-of-the-art optical networking systems to carriers in China's Shanghai, Guangdong and Zhejiang regions . . . . Ignis Optics (San Jose, CA), which manufactures single-mode optical transceivers, has signed on RF Associates North as a manufacturer's representative for Northern California and Northern Nevada . . . . Wave7 Optics (Alpharetta, GA) has raised a third round of funding totaling $15.5 million, bringing the company's total funds raised to $47.5 million. . . . Xilinx, Inc. (San Jose, CA) has collaborated with AcceLight Networks (Bridgeville, PA) to deliver an integrated system for SONET/SDH STS-1 grooming, optical path and MPLS label switching from 80 Gbits to 1.28 terabits in capacity. . . . Zarlink Semiconductor (Ottawa, Canada) and Agilent Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) have announced a multi-source agreement to create a common standard for plugable 4-channel parallel optic transceiver modules that offer an aggregate bandwidth of up to 10 Gbit/s. . . . . Fujitsu Quantum Devices (Yamanashi, Japan) and Sumitomo Electric Industries (Osaka, Japan) announced the enhancements to their multisource agreement (MSA) for a 10 Gbit/s transmission laser diode (LD) module, and NEC Compound Semiconductor Devices (Kanagawa, Japan), NTT Electronics (Tokyo, Japan) and Samsung Electronics (Seoul, Korea) have joined the MSA. . . . The Revision 2.0, the "build-to" specification, of the XPAK 10 Gigabit Ethernet optical module form factor is now available on the group's Web site: http://www.xpak.org. The group also said that its membership has grown to 21 companies. . . . Fiberoptic component maker Oluma (Carlsbad, CA) has signed manufacturers' representatives in key global markets to support increasing sales activity. . . . Teem Photonics (Grenoble, France) and NKT Integration (Copenhagen, Denmark) have announced a multisource agreement to develop a four-port fully integrated gain block consisting of four separately controlled gain blocks in a 110 × 95 × 12-mm3 module.