Is the tunable laser market set for an upturn?

Part 2: Tunable laser market

"The tunable laser market requires a lot of patience to research." So claims Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting Market Research. Kozlov should know; he has spent the last 15 years tracking and forecasting lasers and optical modules for the telecom and datacom markets.

Source: LightCounting, Gazettabyte

The tunable laser market is certainly sizeable; over half a million units will be shipped in 2014, says LightCounting. But the market requires care when forecasting. One subtlety is that certain optical component companies - Finisar, JDSU and Oclaro - are vertically integrated and use their own tunable lasers within the optical modules they sell. LightCounting counts these as module sales rather than tunable laser ones.

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NeoPhotonics secures PIC specialist Santur

Gazettabyte spoke with Tim Jenks, CEO of NeoPhotonics about the Santur acquisition, the 10x10 MSA, vertical integration and why optical components is a technology industry trend-setter

NeoPhotonics has completed the acquisition of Santur, the tunable laser and photonic integration specialist, boosting the company's annual turnover to a quarter of a billion dollars.

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Packet optical transport: Hollowing the network core

Intune Networks has developed an optical packet switching and transport (OPST) system that effectively turns fibre into a distributed switch.

The platform enables a fully-meshed metropolitan networkIntune Networks' CEO, Tim Fritzley (right) and John Dunne, co-founder and CTO with software support for web-based services, claims the Irish start-up. 

“What we have designed allows for the sharing of the same fibre switching assets across multiple services in the metro,” says Tim Fritzley, Intune’s CEO.

The company is in talks with several operators about its OPST system, which is being used for a nationwide network in Ireland. The system is also part of an EC seventh framework project that includes Spanish operator Telefónica.

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Bringing WDM-PON to market

Significant power, size and cost challenges must be overcome before WDM-PON will be widely deployed.

 "We see just one way to bring down the cost, form-factor and energy consumption of the OLT’s multiple transceivers: high integration of transceiver arrays"

Klaus Grobe, ADVA Optical Networking

Considerable engineering effort will be needed to make next-generation optical access schemes using multiple wavelengths competitive with existing passive optical networks (PONs).

Such a multi-wavelength access scheme, known as a wavelength division multiplexing-passive optical network (WDM-PON), will need to embrace new architectures based on laser arrays and reflective optics, and use advanced photonic integration to meet the required size, power consumption and cost targets.

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Oclaro: R&D key for growth

Alain Couder, Oclaro’s CEO, explains why he is upbeat about the photonics market and optical networking in particular.

“We didn’t sell to Intel,” explains Alain Couder, the boss of Oclaro. “Intel looked for a fab[rication plant] that has good VCSEL technology and that could scale and they found us.”  

Couder was talking about how Oclaro became a supplier of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for Intel’s Light Peak optical cable interface technology. VCSELs are part of Oclaro’s Advanced Photonics Solutions, a division addressing non-telecom markets accounting for between 10 and 15 percent of the company’s revenues.

“I believe very clearly that if a component is available on the market, even if you are a module builder, you are much better off selling to your competition rather than having others do so.”

Alain Couder, Oclaro

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