Huawei boosts its optical roadmap with CIP acquisition

Huawei has acquired UK photonic integration specialist, CIP Technologies, from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) for an undisclosed fee. The acquisition gives the Chinese system vendor a wealth of optical component expertise and access to advanced European Union R&D projects.

"By acquiring CIP and integrating the company’s R&D team into Huawei’s own research team, Huawei’s optic R&D capabilities can be significantly enhanced," says Peter Wharton, CEO at the Centre for Integrated Photonics (CIP). CIP Technologies is the trading name of the Centre for Integrated Photonics. 

 Huawei now has six European R&D centres with the acquisition of CIP.

Click to read more ...

Next-generation access will redefine the telcos

Benoît  Felten has left Yankee Group to set up a market research and consultancy company addressing next-generation access.

Gazettabyte caught up with him to understand the goals of his new company, Diffraction Analysis, and why he believes next-generation access is critical for service providers.

"As soon as you, the operator, make that investment decision, it has fundamental implications as to who you are as a company"

Benoît Felten, CEO, Diffraction Analysis

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

Reflecting light to save power

CIP Technologies is bringing its reflective component expertise to an EU-funded project to reduce the power consumption of optical systems.  

System vendors will be held increasingly responsible for the power consumption of their telecom and datacom platforms. That’s because for each watt the equipment generates, up to six watts is required for cooling. It is a burden that will only get heavier given the relentless growth in network traffic.

"Enterprises are looking for huge capacity at low cost and are increasingly concerned about the overall impact on power consumption"

David Smith, CIP Technologies

Click to read more ...

WDM-PON: Can it save operators over €10bn in total cost of ownership?

Behind the numbers

Source: ADVA Optical Networking

“The focus of operators to squeeze the last dollar out of the system and optical component vendors is really nonsense.”

Klaus Grobe, ADVA Optical Networking.

Key findings

The total cost of ownership (TCO) of a widely deployed WDM-PON network is at least 20 percent cheaper than the broadband alternatives of VDSL and GPON. Given that the cost of deploying a wide-scale access network in a large western European country is €60bn, a 20 percent cost saving is huge, even if spread over 25 years.

Click to read more ...

Next-Gen PON: An interview with BT

An interview with Peter Bell, Access Platform Director, BT Innovate & Design on next generation passive optical networks (PONs). These include 10 Gigabit Ethernet PON (EPON) and Gigabit PON (GPON) and wavelength division multiplexing PON (WDM-PON).

Peter Bell, Access Platform Director, BT Innovate & Design

Q: The status of 10 Gigabit PON – 10G EPON and 10G GPON (XG-PON): Applications, where it will be likely be used, and why is it needed?

PB: IEEE 10G EPON: BT not directly involved but we have been tracking it and believe the standard is close to completion  (gazettabyte: The standard was ratified in September 2009.)

Click to read more ...