ADTRAN-ADVA's metro-access play

ADTRAN and ADVA have agreed to merge after a long courtship.

The two CEOs have spoken regularly over the years but several developments spurred them to act.

Tom Stanton, ADTRAN CEO

The merger combines ADTRAN’s expertise in access technologies with ADVA’s metro wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) know-how to create a ‘metro-core-to-door’ company with revenues of $1.2 billion.

As such, the merger promises to double their size and networking skills. Yet the stock market appeared underwhelmed by the announcement, with ADTRAN’s shares down 16% for the rest of the week after the deal was announced. 

Market research analysts, however, are more upbeat.

“ADTRAN and ADVA have a better path forward together than separately,” said John Lively, principal analyst at LightCounting Market Research, in a research note.

The deal is expected to close in the second or third quarter of 2022 but only after several hurdles are overcome in what is described as a complex deal.

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Nokia shares its vision for cost-reduced coherent optics

Nokia explains why coherent optics will be key for high-speed short-reach links and shares some of its R&D activities. The latest in a series of articles addressing what next for coherent.

Part 3: Reducing cost, size and power 

Coherent optics will play a key role in the network evolution of the telecom and webscale players.

The modules will be used for ever-shorter links to enable future cloud services delivered over 5G and fixed-access networks.

Tod Sizer

The first uses will be to link data centres and support traffic growth at the network edge.

This will be followed with coherent optics being used within the data centre, once traffic growth requires solutions that 4-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) direct-detect optics can no longer address.

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