ADC (Nasdaq: ADCT), a global supplier of fiber optics, network equipment, software and integration services for broadband, multiservice networks, announced a new initiative with Agility Communications, Inc., an optical component manufacturer based in Santa Barbara, Calif. The companies have agreed to combine efforts in the development of standards that enable customers to more easily design their systems around common tunable laser interfaces.
The ADC/Agility initiative is intended to provide customers with open interface options of compatible widely tunable lasers. These devices enable the flexible provisioning of affordable bandwidth. The anticipated outcome of the ADC/Agility initiative will be the development of the tunable laser industry's initial standards for a 40-pin parallel form factor, electronic interfaces and host-level software commands.
In addition to this effort, ADC expects to actively participate in future standardization activity through such bodies as the Optical Internetworking Forum, among others.
Telecom providers continue to face the challenge of deploying high-bandwidth networks at increasingly competitive costs. Tunable lasers are sold to telecom systems vendors whose solutions enable telecom carriers to reduce network-operating costs associated with these deployments and provide a critical catalyst in enabling the growth of all-optical networks.
According to a November 2000 research report from telecommunications industry analyst firm RHK, the market for tunable lasers is one of the fastest-growing segments in optical components for terrestrial dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) networks. RHK forecasts this market to grow from almost zero revenue in 2000 to $1 billion in sales by 2004.
ADC, which entered the tunable laser market via its acquisition of Altitun in 2000, claims to have been the first company to deploy tunable lasers in a field environment and the first to commercially ship a tunable laser. ADC's Anywave laser family uses proven Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR) laser technology and includes an innovative, widely tunable semiconductor laser chip with an emission wavelength that can be tuned over the entire 1529-1561 nm band. Lasers that emit in this band can be optically amplified with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) and are used in wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) fiber optic communication systems.
ADC's tunable laser products, along with all of ADC's optical component solutions, will be on display at booth 2600 at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) 2001 in Anaheim, Calif., March 19-21.
About Agility:
Agility Communications, Inc., founded by a team of optical networking veterans in Oct. 1998, is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California and has manufacturing facilities in Allentown, Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.agility.com.
About ADC:
ADC's fiber optics, network equipment, software and integration services make broadband communications enable communications service providers to deliver high-speed Internet, data, video and voice services to consumers and businesses. For more information, visit www.adc.com.