JDSU acquires Metconnex IP
JDSU (Milpitas, CA) announced the acquisition of the technology and patent portfolio of Metconnex (Ottawa, ON, Canada), a developer of wavelength-selective switch modules. JDSU did not acquire any of Metconnex’s business operations. Under the terms of the agreement, JDSU will acquire Metconnex’s intellectual property for $2.5 million.
Selective-switch technology is central to JDSU’s portfolio of reconfigurable add/drop multiplexers. “The benefits provided by a mesh architecture include better economic efficiencies for carriers, reliability, and the flexibility to ramp services to meet growing consumer demand,” said Michael Howard, principal analyst and founder, Infonetics Research.
OmniGuide to expand medical-fiber offering
The closing of a $20 million Series D round of financing for OmniGuide (Cambridge, MA) will allow enhanced product offerings, expanded manufacturing capacity, and increased market penetration for its hollow-core photonic-bandgap optical fibers.
OmniGuide’s FDA-cleared fibers offer, for the very first time, a flexible fiber-based delivery system for CO2 lasers facilitating noninvasive laser microsurgery. OmniGuide’s fibers have been used in over 100 surgeries by customers that include Mount Sinai Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and others.
Omron completes FTTH acquisition
Omron has completed its acquisition of the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) optical-coupler business of NKH Spring (Yokohama, Japan). As outlined in a preliminary agreement that was announced in August, the FTTH business will be operated from Omron’s (Tokyo, Japan) Kusatsu, Japan factory. Omron will maintain the existing supply chain for the immediate future to ensure a stable supply of products.
With this acquisition, Omron aims to expand its business in the FTTH optical-coupler market by leveraging the strong customer base of NHK Spring, a supplier of optical couplers in North America. Omron also plans to further strengthen its line-up of optical couplers by combining NHK Spring’s quartz optical-waveguide technology with its own stacked-polymer optical-waveguide technology to create new high-performance, cost-competitive products.
Optium completes IPO
An initial public offering of 5.2 million shares of common stock at $17.50 per share were offered by Optium (Chalfont, PA), a supplier of optical subsystems that enable transmission, reception, and switching functionality for high-bandwidth, intelligent optical-networking applications for use in telecommunications and cable-TV network systems. The shares will be listed on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol “OPTM.”
IPtronics gets second-round funding for ICs
To continue its expansion toward the goal of becoming a leading supplier of integrated circuits to the emerging market for short-reach optical interconnects for next-generation computer systems and storage networks, IPtronics (Roskilde, Denmark) received its second round of funding from a group of investors.
Founded in 2003 by a group of former Giga and Intel managers, IPtronics has developed a chip technology that enables low-cost, low-power, and small-size optical modules that computer manufactures plan to adopt to overcome the physical constraints from using copper-based connections over high-speed interfaces. IPtronics is currently sampling a chip set to development partners that is lowering the power consumption of optical modules by a factor of four.
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Also in the news . . .
Privately held semiconductor company Avago Technologies (Böblingen, Germany) was awarded the 2006 North American Optoelectronic Components Growth Excellence Award by Frost & Sullivan, a global consulting company. . . . Optical Communication Products (OCP; Woodland Hills, CA) reached an agreement with SAE Magnetics (Hong Kong, China) that will enable the company to manufacture certain product lines in China. . . . NeoPhotonics (San Jose, CA), a supplier of optical networking components for long-haul, metro, and access networks, was named by Lux Research (San Francisco, CA and New York, NY), a nanotechnology research and advisory firm, as one of its “Top 25” venture-backed nanotech companies. . . . Mintera (Acton, MA), provider of 40 Gbit/s optical-transmission systems, raised $10 million in additional venture-capital financing. . . . OptiWay (Rosh Ha Ayin, Israel), provider of Optical Time Division Multiplexing by Locking Lasers (OTDMLL) technology for broadband access and video surveillance markets, moved its headquarters and development center to Park Afek, Rosh Ha Ayin, in the heart of a high-technology area in Israel. . . . Alloptic (Livermore, CA), designer and developer of Gigabit Ethernet passive optical networks, was selected by Italvision XXI for a 2000-home development in the city of Maracay, Venezuela.