The Lightwave Blog

Posted by Stephen Hardy

The folks at StrataLight Communications followed up the Cisco/Comcast 100G demo announcement by confirming that they had provided the optics. But according to Ross Saunders, general manager of next-generation transport at StrataLight, the company isn't focusing on productizing the interface used in the demo in the short term.

Saunders wouldn't provide many details (such as modulation format) of the "DWDM optics" his company supplied for the demo, other than to confirm that it involved a single wavelength running at 100G. The interface did not use the 100G chipset the company recently announced, either.

As the IC announcement implied and Saunders confirmed, StrataLight is focusing its 100G attention in the near term on a muxponder product that could be used to aggregate 10G and 40G wavelengths as an interim step toward serial 100G transmission. Saunders says the muxponder or "multiplexing transponder" is slated to be delivered to an OEM and a carrier for trials within the next month. When and if the prototype evolves into a commercially available product will hinge largely on the reaction it generates during these trials.

Meanwhile, the company continues its work in the 40G space.

Labels: 100G, 40G, Cisco, Comcast, StrataLight

Posted by Stephen Hardy

As reported by Morgan Keegan's Paul Bonenfant, Opnext President and CEO Harry Bosco yesterday morning told the audience at Cowen and Company's 20/20 TMT Conference in New York that the reason he hasn't executed a previously announced stock buy back is that he's "looking at different things" now that the acquisition price for companies has come down. In particular, he said, he's looking at high-end optics, specifically 40G and 100G module and technology companies. "Some are small and some are fairly significant," he said.

Bonenfant identified Mintera and StrataLight as the two most prominent companies of interest. He believes a StrataLight acquisition is more likely, given the fact that JDSU has invested in Mintera. The fact that StrataLight supplies technology to Nokia Siemens Networks, as does Opnext, doesn't hurt either.

One company that Bonenfant didn't mention that Opnext also might be looking at is CoreOptics. The company is already active in 40G development as well as coherent detection technology for 100G. (See my May 15 blog posting below.) The fact that the OIF has decided to build its 100G DWDM implentation agreement around dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying with coherent detection indicates that CoreOptics is moving in the right direction for 100G.

Labels: CoreOptics, JDSU, Mintera, Opnext, StrataLight