JUNE 12, 2007 � POINTek (search for POINTek) of Korea has opened a North Americas sales and marketing office in Fullerton, CA, to promote its athermal arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) products.
Since early 2005, the company has been selling athermal AWGs to "major photonics module and subsystem vendors" in the US, and with expansion of its flagship athermal AWG family of products in recent months, the company's marketing advisory operations in California has been turned into a multi-year commitment for a full-scale business operation.
POINTek's CEO, Dr. T.H. Rhee, assigned a former top executive of Hanjin Information System and Telecommunication, Dr. Donald P. Yu, as the head of the North Americas operations overseeing all business activities including sales and marketing. Pointing to Dr. Yu's expertise in managing large computer-communication technology enterprises, "We anticipate that he will lead us to a long-term growth in the USA as well as in all global business operations," said Rhee.
With an eye towards replacing traditional thermal AWGs with cost-effective athermal AWGs, POINTek's offerings are designed to take advantage of high performance in terms of environmental reliability and athermal characteristics. An "athermalization" packaging innovation differentiates POINTek's athermal AWG from the conventional AWGs, the company says.
At present, POINTek manufactures many types of athermal AWGs (AAWGs) ranging from 16-channel/200-GHz to 44-channel/100-GHz AAWGs. POINTek says it can tailor each AAWG per its customer's specifications in terms of channel spacing, type (flat top, semi-flat top, and Gaussian), and other optical parameters.
POINTek's current AAWG family includes 16-channel/200-GHz (semi-flat top type both for WDM-PON FTTP application and DWDM, ROADM, metro, and CATV applications), 32-channel/100-GHz (Gaussian type for WDM-PON FTTx application), 40-channl/100-GHz (all types for DWDM, ROADM, metro, and CATV applications), 44-channel/100-GHz (semi-flat top type for metro/long-haul transmission application), and lower channel (below 16)/200-GHz (for other novel applications). To date, about 1,000 AAWGs have been manufactured and shipped, largely for WDM-PON deployment field trials.
According to Yu, the market for AAWGs has opened up in real terms, leading to the replacement of conventional thermal AWGs and TFF-based multiplexer/demultiplexers in long-haul/metro applications as well as in ROADM. He added, "The market for the CATV application has not been great, but signs are showing as they look towards higher-channel multiplexer/demultiplexer broadband access network solutions."
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