FIBER OPTICS INDUSTRY REPORT

Sept. 1, 2007
Developer and marketer of telecommunications and consumer optoelectronic solutions Arasor (Mountain View, CA) signed definitive agreements to acquire U.S.-owned Australian optical component company AOFR (Canberra, Australia) and Alfalight (Madison, WI), a manufacturer of high-power telecom laser diodes.

Arasor acquisitions strengthen its telecom

Developer and marketer of telecommunications and consumer optoelectronic solutions Arasor (Mountain View, CA) signed definitive agreements to acquire U.S.-owned Australian optical component company AOFR (Canberra, Australia) and Alfalight (Madison, WI), a manufacturer of high-power telecom laser diodes. Both companies bring with them blue-chip customers, including Telstra, Avanex, Siemens, and a variety of tier 1 telecommunications companies; the acquired companies are expected to contribute approximately $20 million in revenue per year.

“With these acquisitions, Arasor has brought the critical laser element in-house, enabling improved profitability and control of future laser developments in Arasor’s emerging markets,” said Simon Cao, Arasor’s chief executive. “We now control the three key elements common to all our telecommunications products (optical chip, laser chip, and coupler).”

AEi fiber-optic draw- tower orders up sharply

Automation Engineering (AEi; Wilmington, MA) is experiencing a dramatic increase this year in new inquiries and booked orders for its fiber-optic drawing towers, including its fiber-bundle draw tower and its single-fiber draw tower. “Our drawing towers include many unique technical features that support both R&D and full production operations,” said Andre By, CTO. “For our single-fiber drawing towers, AEi’s unique tractor draw mechanism spreads out the pressure applied to the fiber as it is drawn. This minimizes fiber shape distortion during drawing, especially for hollow fibers.”

Luxtera joins the Ethernet Alliance

To promote complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology over copper,Luxtera (Carlsbad, CA) joined the Ethernet Alliance, an industry-led organization committed to the success and expansion of Ethernet technology. According to Luxtera, the company’s CMOS photonics technology breaks cost barriers faced by existing optical-transceiver technologies, enabling wide adoption of high-performance optical interconnect as an economically viable alternative to legacy low-performance copper interconnects. Luxtera’s technology integrates optical and electronic circuits, including modulators and photodetectors, on a single CMOS die, bringing the performance of optics down to an attractive price point.

Quantum cryptography nears commercialization

id Quantique (Geneva, Switzerland), a company focused on the commercialization of quantum cryptography, and Senetas (Melbourne, Australia), a developer and supplier of high-speed network encryption hardware, have developed a unique hybrid quantum-cryptography solution that is now undergoing customer testing in Europe. According to Grégoire Ribordy, CEO of id Quantique, this product, named Cerberis, is generating strong interest, in particular in the banking and finance sector. It allows encryption over asynchronous transfer mode, synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy, and Gigabit Ethernet networks. The two companies have signed a reseller agreement that allows id Quantique to distribute Senetas’ range of CypherNet high-speed encryptors in selected countries in Europe.

Huawei awards Bookham

Bookham (San Jose, CA), a provider of optical-communications components, modules and subsystems, received the prestigious Best Support Supplier award from Huawei (Shenzhen, China)-one of the world’s largest telecom equipment vendors. The award recognizes the support Bookham has given to Huawei in 2007, including excellent service and flexible delivery to meet Huawei’s needs. Bookham supplies 10 Gbit/s laser modulators, receivers, directly modulated lasers, and optical 980 nm pumps from its facility in Shenzhen.

“This is the third time in three years that Huawei has honored us with an award,” said Adrian Meldrum, vice president of sales and marketing. The manufacturing facility in Shenzhen opened in March 2004 and employs more than 1300 people. Bookham assembles all of its telecom products in China.

For more business news visit www.optoelectronicsreport.com.

Also in the news . . .

Avantes, developer and manufacturer of instruments for fiber-optic spectroscopy, such as fiber-optic cables and probes, has opened its new headquarters in Eerbeek, The Netherlands. . . . Cox Communications (Atlanta, GA), selected an Infinera (Sunnyvale, CA) Digital Optical Network for its 12,000-mile national transport network. . . . RSoft Design Group (Ossining, NY) released its Optical Communication Design Suite version 4.7 to design and simulate multimode and single-mode communication systems with bit rates up to 100 Gbit/s and beyond. . . . RED-C Optical Networks (Tel Aviv, Israel), a provider of integrated optical subsystems based on optical amplification technology, and Fabrinet (San Francisco), a provider of advanced manufacturing services, announced that RED-C has selected Fabrinet as its contract manufacturing partner for full turnkey production services.

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