China and the global PON market

China has become the world's biggest market for passive optical network (PON) technology even though deployments there have barely begun. That is because China, with approximately a quarter of a billion households, dwarfs all other markets. Yet according to market research firm Ovum, only 7% of Chinese homes were connected by year end 2011. 

"In 2012, BOSAs [board-based PON optical sub-assemblies] will represent the majority versus optical transceivers for PON ONTs and ONUs"

Julie Kunstler, Ovum

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Avago's latest optical engine targets active optical cables

Avago Technologies has unveiled its first family of active optical cables for use in the data centre and for high performance computing.

The company has developed an optical module for use in the active optical cables (AOCs). Known as the Atlas 75x, the optical engine reduces the power consumption and cost of the AOC to better compete with direct-attach copper cables. 

“Some 99 percent of [active optical cable] applications are 20m or less”

Sharon Hall, Avago

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Infinera adds software to its PIC for instant bandwidth

Infinera has enabled its DTN-X platform to deliver rapidly 100 Gigabit services. The ability to fulfill capacity demand quickly is seen as a competitive advantage by operators. Gazettabyte spoke with Infinera and TeliaSonera International Carrier, a DTN-X customer, about the merits of its 'instant bandwidth' and asked several industry analysts for their views.

Infinera has added a WDM line card hosting its 500 Gigabit super-channel photonic integrated circuit to its DTN-X platform

Pravin Mahajan, Infinera.

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VDSL2 vectoring explained

Several system vendors including Adtran, Alcatel-Lucent and ZTE have announced vectoring technology that boosts the performance of very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL2) broadband access technology. Vectoring is used to counter crosstalk - signal leakage between the telephony twisted wire pairs that curtails VDSL2's bit rate performance – as is now explained.

Technology briefing

There is a large uncertainty in the resulting VDSL2 bit rate for a given loop length. With vectoring this uncertainty is almost removed

Paul Spruyt, Alcatel-Lucent

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ECOC 2012 summary - Part 2: Finisar

Gazettabyte completes its summary of key optical announcements at the recent ECOC show held in Amsterdam. In Part 2, Finisar's announcements are detailed.

Part 2

"The general thought with system vendors is that the more they can shrink the in-line equipment into a fewer number of slots, the more slots they have open and available for revenue-generating transceiver and transponder cards"

Rafik Ward, Finisar

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ECOC 2012 summary - Part 1: Oclaro

Gazettabyte completes its summary of key optical announcements at the recent ECOC show held in Amsterdam. Oclaro's announcements detailed here are followed by those of Finisar and NeoPhotonics.

Part 1: Oclaro

 

"Networks are getting more complex and you need automation so that they are more foolproof and more efficient operationally"

Per Hansen, Oclaro

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Q&A with Kotura's CTO: Integration styles and I/O limits

The second, and final part, of the Q&A with Mehdi Asghari, CTO of silicon photonics start-up, Kotura. 

Part 2 of 2

"When do the big players adopt a new technology and go from an electrical to an optical solution? In my experience, usually when they absolutely have to."

Mehdi Asghari, CTO, Kotura

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