AFL Telecommunications (www.afltele.com) has acquired a majority ownership position in The Light Brigade (www.lightbrigade.com), a fiber-optic training company and supplier of media and products. This acquisition expands AFL's technical training capacity, say company representatives, allowing for increased service to current and potential customers.
GPON semiconductor and software supplier BroadLight (www.broadlight.com) is collaborating with Atheros Communications (www.atheros.com) to provide complete, turnkey reference platforms that integrate BroadLight's GPON technology with the Atheros XSPAN, the industry's most widely adopted 802.11n Wi-Fi technology.
CoreOptics Inc. (www.CoreOptics.com),a designer and manufacturer of 40- and 10-Gbit/sec optical networking subsystems, and ADVA Optical Networking (www.advaoptical.com) have announced the joint development of the second generation of 10-Gbit/sec Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation (MLSE-2) technology on ADVA Optical Networking's FSP 3000 wavelength-division mulitplexing (WDM) platform.
Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com) has signed a five-year, $14 million development contract with Kotura (www.kotura.com) for DARPA's Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Communications (UNIC) program. Previously, Sun announced its participation in DARPA's $44 million program to advance a virtual supercomputer using an on-chip network of low-cost optical interconnects.
Nortel (www.nortel.com) announced that Bell Canada and Alaska Communications Systems have selected its 40G optical capabilities. Bell Canada says it is using Nortel's 40G Adaptive Optical Engine to transport four times the current network bandwidth within its Montreal-New York, Toronto-Chicago, and Toronto-Montreal traffic corridors. This investment gives Bell more bandwidth in its backbone network, ensuring support for more customers and higher access speeds down the road, say company representatives.
Corrigent Systems (www.corrigent.com), provider of carrier Ethernet transport (CET) equipment for next-generation service provider networks, announced that its CM-100 product line was selected by Hanaro Telecom, Korea's leading ISP, as a main network infrastructure to deliver premium IPTV services.
Hitachi Telecom (USA) Inc. (www.hitachitelecom.com) will partner with Carina Technology Inc. (www.carinatek.com) to offer the complementary advantages of reduced operational expense and increased revenue potential to utility companies that plan to provide FTTP services using GPON technology. The combination of fiber-optic communication technologies with advanced management functions of power utility operations is a cornerstone of the "Smart Grid" concept, which is becoming increasingly critical as utilities prepare for the power grid of the future, Hitachi says.
Anagran (www.anagran.com), provider of high-capacity network traffic management technology and products, announced that it has closed a Series D round of funding totaling $8.6 million. Each of the company's existing venture capital investors�Advanced Technology Ventures, ArrowPath Venture Partners, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson�invested in this latest round.
Alcatel-Lucent (www.alcatel-lucent.com) has signed three new multi-million Euro contracts with RTE (www.rte-france.com), a subsidiary of French utility EDF Group, to deliver, install, and assist RTE in the operation and maintenance of an integrated fiber-optic network. The 1,300-km network expansion will enable RTE to enhance mission-critical communications on its high-voltage transmission grid as well as enhance its optical security network, "ROSE" or Réseau Optique de Sécurité.
SMART Comp., a Czech metropolitan optical networks operator, plans to build a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) optical network in Brno based on Cisco's (www.cisco.com) IP networking architecture. The network will enable residents to be able to use triple-play services (Internet access, digital TV, and VoIP telephony) in a converged way. SMART Comp. plans to offer triple-play services in about 6,600 homes by September 2009.
Titanic Quarter Ltd., an urban mixed-use regeneration of a 185-acre site in central Belfast, Northern Ireland, announced that Redstone plc (www.redstone.co.uk) has been granted exclusive rights to develop an advanced FTTH infrastructure. All future residential and business occupants of Titanic Quarter will have access to fully fibered high-speed and high-quality voice, Internet, IP television, and other services. The network will initially be able to support the delivery of services to households at up to 100 Mbits/sec in both directions. The Titanic Quarter network will be based on a Point-to-Point active Ethernet star technology.
Future Fibre Technologies Pty. Ltd. (FFT; www.fft.com.au) has filed a lawsuit against Optellios Inc. (www.fiberpatrol.com), in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. FFT claims that it is the rightful owner of U.S. Patent No. 7,142,736, and that Optellios is guilty of infringing that patent, which relates to improvements in the optical fiber-based instrusion-detection system pioneered by FFT in the late 1990s.
Alcatel-Lucent (www.alcatel-lucent.com) has signed a contract to deploy the Atlantic-Mediterranean segment of the 15,000-km (9,000-mile) Europe India Gateway (EIG) submarine cable system. According to Alcatel-Lucent representatives, EIG is the first direct, high-bandwidth optical fiber submarine cable system from the U.K. to India. With completion scheduled in the second quarter of 2010, EIG will deliver an ultimate capacity of up to 3.84 Tbits/sec.
Nokia Siemens Networks (www.nokiasie mensnetworks.com) has announced plans to focus on DSL and next-generation optical access technology and limit its investment in existing GPON technology due to its belief that the mass market rollout of FTTH is "unlikely in the short term."
Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd.'s (www.oki.com) board of directors has approved the spin-off of its telecommunications business through an incorporation-type company split. The new entity, OKI Networks Co. Ltd., was established on October 1.
BTI Systems (www.btisystems.com), a supplier of intelligent services edge products for the delivery of high-bandwidth, multi-protocol services, has signed a development and supply agreement that covers joint research and development initiatives with Wuhan FiberHome Networks Co. Ltd. (FHN; www.fiberhomegroup.com). To ensure close collaboration with FHN and to support its Asian customer and partners, BTI has established a new subsidiary in the People's Republic of China.
GigOptix (www.gigoptix.com) says that ZTE Corp. (www.zte.com) has adopted one of its modulator drivers for use in one of China-based system house's DWDM systems. The GigOptix part is used to drive electro-absorption and Mach-Zehnder modulators in fiber-optic transceivers and line cards used in metro and long-haul lightwave communication systems.
Telecarrier (www.telecarrier.com), a telecommunications service provider in Panama, has selected Occam Networks (www.occamnetworks.com) as the principal broadband access supplier in a program designed to increase broadband services and push broadband access throughout the country. This expansion is intended to help meet the needs of Panama's national economic development initiative, which has to date attracted significant foreign business investment.
Gtd Group, one of the main service providers in Chile, has selected Alcatel-Lucent (www.alcatel-lucent.com) to deploy the country's first network based on fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) GPON technology. Installation and deployment of the GPON was scheduled to start in 3Q 2008, initially serving residential broadband users in Santiago's prestigious Santa MarÃa de Manquehue district, with other neighborhoods of Chile's capital city following shortly thereafter. Gtd Manquehue will deploy the Alcatel-Lucent 7342 Intelligent Services Access Manager Fiber-to-the-User (ISAM FTTU) and the Alcatel-Lucent 5520 Access Management System for element management.
Hitachi Telecom (USA) (www.hitachitele com.com) has teamed up with Falcon IP/Complete of Malden, MO, to provide a fully integrated MPEG-4 IPTV option for service providers that are implementing Hitachi's AMN1220 Gigabit Passive Optical Network Fiber to the Premises.
Nortel (www.nortel.com) announced that it will explore divestiture of its Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business, which includes its optical and Carrier Ethernet portfolios. Despite calling MEN "a premium asset with a highly differentiated offering," the company says it needs to restructure to reduce costs and mitigate the risks associated with its fourth-generation carrier wireless investments. "Monetization of this asset is in line with the further consolidation necessary in the industry and will provide MEN customers and employees with a clear path forward. Throughout the process, Nortel will maintain MEN R&D investments, new product introduction timelines, and all customer commitments," said Nortel president and CEO Mike Zafirovski.