by Hassaun A. Jones-Bey
Intel expands optical-networking business
Intel (Santa Clara, CA) is expanding its optical-networking business to include photonics design and manufacturing. Intel recently completed a 70,000-sq-ft design, fabrication, and assembly/test facility in San Jose, CA, built specifically for photonic-component manufacturing using 8-in. silicon wafers. Intel also recently acquired Templex Technology (San Jose, CA), which provided additional photonics expertise along with a Bragg-grating component technology for the highly precise filtering and mixing technology used in manufacturing photonic components.
Worldwide metro DWDM market to approach $12.6 billion by 2006
The market opportunity for metro DWDM systems will increase from almost $1.4 billion in 2001 to nearly $12.6 billion by 2006, according to a market and technology assessment report from Pioneer Consulting (Boston, MA), "Metro DWDM: Global Opportunities and Strategies in the Metro Market."
"With an eye toward the bottom line, carriers are currently preferring metro DWDM," said Doug McEuen, senior market analyst in optical networking.
BT and Lucent launch global optical-transport network
British Telecommunications (BT; London, England) and Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) have announced successful implementation of a high-capacity optical network to support BT's international requirements and expansion into the services sector. The network will continue to be developed over an initial five-year period and is the largest yet for BT, stretching across the South of England and connecting to a transatlantic submarine cable network.
Electronic Connections opens cable facility
Electronic Connections (Englishtown, NJ) has acquired a cable-assembly operation in Hatfield, PA. Cables and Assembly Technology (CAT) is housed in a 10,000-sq-ft facility. "By acquiring this facility, we are able to provide total design and engineering support, marking and labeling, special packaging, labor-intensive assemblies, and do all of this in short or long production runs, whatever the customer needs," explained Charles Cannata, vice president.
Photonic IC vendor makes commercial debut
Intense Photonics (High Blantyre, Scotland) made its commercial debut at OFC, demonstrating the first ICs fabricated at its new compound semiconductor plant, and unveiling details of a comprehensive range of indium phosphide devices for dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) applications. The company demonstrated a 980-nm laser source for EDFA pump applications, offered as either a single device or a monolithic parallel array of up to 10.
Two-thirds of DSL market resides in Europe and Asia-Pacific
Global service-provider spending on digital subscriber line (DSL) equipment topped $2.3 billion in 2001, according to RHK (South San Francisco, CA). Europe and Asia-Pacific led the global market with 66% of ports shipped. Alcatel remained the world market-share leader with 41%, followed by Siemens at 13%, and Lucent at 10%. Over 19 million DSL ports shipped in 2001.
Also in the news . . .
Alcatel Optronics (Paris, France), JDS Uniphase (San Jose, CA, and Ottawa, Ont., Canada), and Kamelian (Oxfordshire, England) have announced a multisource agreement for semiconductor optical amplifiers, defining common mechanical and optical performance specifications. . . . Essex (Columbia, MD) and Fiberspace (Woodland Hills, CA) have signed a memorandum of understanding to comarket the Essex hyperfine WDM technology and Fiberspace's Gridlocker laser source. . . . NEC Compound Semiconductor Devices (Kanagawa, Japan) and Sumitomo Electric Industries (Osaka, Japan) have joined into a multisource agreement to set a common architecture for 10-Gbit/s receiver modules used in optical networking. . . . Iolon (San Jose, CA) has expanded its worldwide presence with the opening of its Tokyo office and a distribution agreement with leading Japanese telecommunications distributor NTT-ME (Tokyo, Japan). . . . Scientists from Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ), have sent 2.56 Tbit (trillion bits) of information per second over a distance of 4000 km (2500 mi)—roughly the distance between Orlando, FL, and San Diego, CA. . . . Optiwave (Ottawa, Ont., Canada) has entered into an OEM agreement with Corning (Corning, NY) whereby Optiwave's EDFA Design LITE software tool for the design of optical amplifiers and lasers will be distributed with Corning PureMode erbium-doped photonic fiber and will use encrypted characterized data to enable easy amplifier design. . . . Bringing with it eight years of photonic research, Essient Photonics (Glasgow, Scotland) has announced its first round of funding totaling US$7 million.