Molex Buys Polymicro Tech

LISLE, Ill., July 26, 2007 -- Electronic components company Molex Inc. announced it has acquired Phoenix, Ariz.-based Polymicro Technologies LLC. Terms were not disclosed.

Polymicro makes silica capillary tubing and specialty optical fibers, optical fiber and capillary assemblies, discrete microcomponents and quartz optical fiber ferrules. It also provides initial product design, product & process development, prototyping and beta trials and volume production services for analytical, medical, aerospace, military, manufacturing, telecommunication and communication markets, with the potential for entry into the analytical, genomic and biotechnology markets, Molex said.

Polymicro has been in business since 1984 and employs approximately 100. It will operate as a subsidiary of Molex Inc. as part of its Global Integrated Products Div. A Molex spokesperson said all of Polymicro's work force will remain at its Phoenix facility and that its operations "will be business as usual."

Michael Nauman, president of the Molex division, said the acquisition will help boost its share of the global fiber-optic assemblies market.

Molex products include electrical and fiber optic interconnection products and systems, switches and integrated products. It has 65 plants in 20 countries.

CommScope Sees BrightPath for Cable FTTP

August 6, 2007

Commscope has emerged as the early leader in supplying cable operators with fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) solutions targeted at greenfields and low-density regions.

CommScope says it has deployed BrightPath, its FTTP solution, with three major cable operators, and has installations pending with another three MSOs.

The BrightPath system is billed for low-density areas or greenfields and new master communities, where developers may insist on FTTP because there's a perceived premium value assigned to homes attached to a strand of glass.

"So, in these cases, it is more about answering the call for FTTH from developers, and not about bandwidth," says CommScope's director of business development, David Morrocco.

The BrightPath system is designed to allow an operator to leverage its existing hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) plant. The platform consists of a special fiber node, supplied by Aurora Networks, and a home-side network interface unit (NIU) that converts signals from optical to electrical. Each subscriber is served by a single fiber drop, which transports 1550 nm down and 1310 nm in the reverse path. Up to 32 subscribers can be served on a single distribution fiber.

CommScope's manager of application engineering, Mark Vogel, calls BrightPath a "cyber version of an HFC plant."

The system is also made to be compatible with an operator's existing headends, cable modem termination systems, billing systems, cable modems, and digital set-tops.

"Operational systems and practices are unchanged, so headend and support personnel do not have to be retrained," Morrocco explains.

Although the economics can vary based on deployment densities, costs for installing BrightPath are within 20 percent of HFC new-builds, and about 50 percent better compared to the current PON-based scheme used by Verizon, according to CommScope.

In lower-density networks, Morrocco adds, BrightPath can cost less than HFC, because active electronics, save for the node, are eliminated.

Motorola and Scientific Atlanta have not announced any deployments or trial work with cable operators for their respective approaches. Alloptic, Inc., however, has gained some traction for its fiber-fed "MicroNode" system with operators such as Bend Broadband and Armstron Cable. Some Tier 1 MSOs are also exploring MicroNode deployments, according to Shane Eleniak, Alloptic's VP for marketing and business development.

Wave7 Optics is also approaching MSOs about deploying FTTP in targeted situations, but announcements have been few and far between. In 2006,CableOne teamed with Wave 7 to deploy an FTTP network serving a new 7,000-home area in Rio Rancho, N.M.

Morrocco says CommScope completed its first BrightPath deployment in August 2006. The company began shipping the system commercially about six months ago.

"We feel like we've hit the market in terms of having the right solution for cable operators," he says.

But CommScope is not disclosing names of its deployment and trial partners. According to multiple sources familiar with the system, however,Time Warner Cable, Bresnan Communications, CableOne , and Sunflower Broadband are among those giving BrightPath a look at some level.

Among that group, Sunflower Broadband, an operator based in Lawrence, Kan., is testing the BrightPath system in a neighborhood of about 40 to 50 homes.

Sunflower, which serves more than 30,000 subscribers, completed the installation near the end of July and is now conducting extensive tests of the FTTP platform, according to Patrick Knorr, the operator's general manager. Sunflower has been running fiber to businesses for nearly five years to deliver voice and high-speed Internet services, but has more recently started to ponder FTTP's potential in residential environments. Although home contractors may be insisting on FTTP in new developments, that's not the primary driver for Sunflower.

Sunflower, Knorr says, discovered that it makes more economic sense -- at least on paper -- to deploy FTTP in low-density, semi-rural areas, or to high-end homes on large lots, because plant and maintenance costs appear to be much lower than they are with HFC.

"I'd say we're 95 percent comfortable with what we're seeing," Knorr says of Sunflower's experience so far with BrightPath. The operator, he adds, is still ironing out some "minor" technology issues, including how Sunflower might provide backup power.

If BrightPath checks out, Sunflower may switch to that architecture for all greenfield construction and possibly use it to replace older plant in low-density areas. Knorr estimates that just 5 percent of Sunflower's plant, serving about 1 percent of its customer base, might fall into that category.

Knorr is also unconcerned if cable's involvement with FTTP in certain situations might create perceptions that HFC is in its waning days. In fact, he believes, as other MSOs do, that HFC has plenty of punch left.

While FTTP "is the next quantum leap forward, HFC is an extraordinarily powerful product that's embedded, and we've advanced that so it has [as much] capacity today as a fiber network. As time marches on, there will be a point, maybe 10 years from now, that we'll need fiber to meet customer needs."

And Sunflower isn't the only cable party to suggest that FTTP could play a part in the evolution of the HFC network. Last fall, a leaked "strategic assessment" from CableLabs titled Cable Response Alternatives To FTTP put forth the notion that it might be more economical for MSOs to take fiber all the way to the home… but not until node sizes reach below 125 homes passed. Today, plenty of HFC systems still operate node sizes of 500 or 250 homes.

Another indicator that FTTP will play a role in MSO strategies, either in greenfield pockets or as a longer-term evolutionary step, is the industry's recently created "RF Over Glass" study group, helmed by Time Warner Cable engineering exec Paul Brooks. That project, according to people familiar with it, is taking a closer look at the technology to determine whether it's necessary to take things to the next level and develop industry standards that aim to develop interoperability between vendors and drive down costs.

Bend it like Bekham...er, like Corning

This is an article from Fortune magazine about Corning's new bendable fiber I posted about previously here.

(Fortune Magazine) -- Like any gigantic telecommunications company, Verizon is in love with optical fiber.

It likes that the super-skinny tubes of glass are lightweight and durable. It appreciates that fiber can carry phone calls over long distances without needing lots of gear to keep the signals moving along. But what Verizon really loves is the material's ability to transmit 25 trillion bits of data per second; that's the equivalent of 400 million simultaneous phone calls, or 450 channels of high-definition television. (That's about 3.6 million times the capacity of Verizon's copper phone lines, which can deliver seven million bits per second, tops.) And so Verizon, which wants to sell not just phone service but lightning-fast Internet connections and TV as well, is spending $23 billion to deploy 80,000 miles of fiber directly to as many as 18 million customers' homes.

But no love affair is perfect, and Verizon has one big quibble with those wonderful glass filaments: They can't be bent the way copper can. The problem isn't breakage: Optical fiber is very flexible. But light, which is how data and calls are transmitted in fiber, travels in a straight line. As long as the glass is kept taut, everything's wonderful. Bend it a little, however, and the light - and therefore the data - starts to escape. Wrap the strand in a tight coil, and you lose the signal entirely.

This intolerance for bending can make fiber optics a nightmare to install in someone's home. Snaking the wiring along the floorboards is out of the question - just one tight turn around the bookcase, and the signal is kaput. So Verizon's installers have been forced to come up with alternate routes, such as drilling holes in walls to get the cabling from one room to another. The process is time-consuming, expensive, and potentially destructive. The problem is particularly acute in apartment buildings - and there are a lot of those in Verizon's East Coast territory - which are full of conduits, shafts, and corners that must be navigated in order to hook up each customer. (In most single-family homes Verizon just needs to connect the fiber to a special box on the outside of the customer's house.) Fun fact: To get a fiber connection to a typical basement apartment, installers encounter an average of 12 right-angle turns.

Enter the brainiacs at Corning, a company best known to consumers for its sturdy cookware, a division it sold in 1998, and its Pyrex lab glass. Corning also happens to be the world's largest manufacturer of optical fiber (it is glass, after all), and when its executives learned that Verizon was planning to spend billions on the stuff, they sprang into problem-solving mode.

It turns out that Corning's researchers had been looking into developing new products specifically for fiber-to-the-home projects since 1998 - long before Verizon announced its fiber-optic service, known as FiOS. This year Corning completed work on a breakthrough fiber it is announcing this summer. The company gave Fortune an exclusive look at the technology, which has the potential to eliminate many of the challenges that have slowed fiber deployments worldwide.

"We're not always the fastest innovator, nor are we the cheapest," says Corning chairman and CEO Wendell P. Weeks. "So we have to solve big problems that really matter - and this is one of them." Many of its biggest advancements emanate from its upstate New York research center, Sullivan Park, a concrete and glass structure that looks more like an Eastern European housing project than a hotbed of innovation. And yet scientists there have invented everything from processes for making large LCD TV screens to lenses for the Hubble telescope and, now, highly bendable fiber.

Corning's researchers figured out a way to keep the light going as it turns corners - lots and lots of corners. We can't go too deep into the technical details - the company exhibits CIA-levels of paranoia about its inventions. But essentially Corning's technology infuses the cladding that surrounds the fiber's narrow core with microscopic guardrails called nanostructures. They help keep the light from seeping out of the fiber, even when it is wound around a pencil - treatment that normally would render it completely useless.

Like many innovations at Corning, the discovery of "bend insensitive" fiber was a combination of serendipity and determination. A group of scientists from different disciplines - chemist Dana Bookbinder, chemical engineer Pushkar Tandon, and optical scientist Ming-Jun Li - had been thinking independently about nanostructures in their fields. Bookbinder, a sociable chap who says he spends a lot of his time "b.s.-ing" with other scientists, realized they needed to collaborate. They began brainstorming on Friday afternoons, and by the summer of 2004 they had started experimenting with nanostructures in fiber.

At first they conducted experiments on their own initiative, with Bookbinder rewarding his colleagues with homemade chocolates for coming in on weekends to help cook up early versions of the fiber. He also encountered skeptics. "We had several physicists who rolled their eyes and said, 'This will never work,'?" Bookbinder recalls.

Corning's business executives were less disbelieving, and as soon as they got wind of the project in early 2006, they put it on the fast track for development. They even shared early findings with Verizon, which loves the idea.

"When you see somebody tie a fiber cable in a knot and it is still able to transmit a signal, you initially think, 'There's something not right with that,'?" says Paul Lacouture, the Verizon executive who has led its FiOS buildout. Lacouture (who announced his retirement in late June) says the company also is considering wireless technologies that could help it deliver broadband in apartments, but for now Verizon's money is on Corning and its bendable fiber.

Corning just needs to apply its innovation skills to the manufacturing process: The first spools of nanostructure fiber for commercial use have yet to roll out of Corning's factories. "When they have it," says Lacouture, "we're ready to use it."

ASIA LEADS THE WORLD IN FIBER-TO-THE-HOME PENETRATION

(WASHINGTON, DC) – Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan are the world leaders in the percentage of homes that receive broadband communications services over direct fiber optic connections, according to a new global ranking of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) market penetration issued jointly by the FTTH Councils of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America.

According to this first ever official ranking of FTTH deployments in the world’s economies, 21.2 percent of homes in Hong Kong are wired with FTTH, followed by South Korea at 19.6 percent and Japan at 16.3 percent. Scandinavian countries occupy the next three positions, with Sweden having 7.2 percent of its households connected to FTTH, Denmark at 2.9 percent and Norway at 2.5 percent.

Taiwan, Italy, People’s Republic of China, The Netherlands and the United States round out the top 11 economies, with FTTH penetration rates of between 1.4 and 1 percent of households. Only economies with penetration of 1 percent or more were included in the ranking.

The three regional FTTH Councils joined together to create this first official global FTTH ranking in order to provide the telecommunications industry, governments and regulators with a unique snapshot of international fiber access penetration. Going forward, the councils will update and re-issue the rankings on an annual basis, as well as work jointly to further refine the research methods in order to provide more in-depth information.

Announcing the release of the global ranking at the FTTH Council Asia-Pacific’s Beijing Conference today, Shoichi Hanatani, President of the FTTH Council Asia-Pacific said, “For the first time we have a tool to monitor the transition that is now occurring around the world, from legacy copper loops to powerful new optical fiber access networks.”

The global ranking follows the unified definition of FTTH terms announced by the three councils last year, and which has formed the basis for recent market research by each council. For completeness and accuracy the ranking includes both FTTH and FTTB (fiber-to-the-building) figures, while copper-based broadband access technologies (DSL, FTT-Curb, FTT-Node) are not included.

“By pooling the data from three regional market studies, the compiled information completes a dedicated resource for global telecommunications professionals to compare industry research from different regions of the world, and open some eyes to the wider FTTH picture,” said Joeri Van Bogaert, President of the FTTH Council Europe. “This will be useful in monitoring the success of government and regulatory policy in supporting the historical transition to fiber-based broadband.”

“With this global ranking, it is now evident which countries are FTTH leaders and which are FTTH laggards,” said Joe Savage, President of the FTTH Council North America. “What is most interesting is how the leading economies in FTTH penetration are also those with clear public policies aimed at promoting deployment of next-generation broadband networks as a matter of strategic national importance.”

AT&T to offer TV service in N.C.

RALEIGH - AT&T will spend $350 million to offer television to North Carolina households, creating a major competitor for cable and satellite companies and a new choice for channel surfers.

The phone company's investment in the state over the next several years, announced Tuesday in Raleigh, will pay for fiber-optic network upgrades needed to transmit TV signals over phone lines. AT&T wants to sell bundled packages of phone, Internet, wireless and TV service, which could help reduce prices and spur more technology.

But AT&T officials were mum on some crucial details Tuesday, such as when the company will start selling TV service in North Carolina and how much it will cost.

"We're working on getting the network upgraded and will say more -- probably before the end of the year -- on timing," said Cynthia Marshall, president of AT&T North Carolina after a news conference at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh. Ahead of that, "we don't want to give away too much to competitors," she said.

AT&T officials have said since last year that they are eager to get started. The company, which took over BellSouth's local phone business as part of its acquisition of that company last year, is losing its phone customers to rivals such as cable-TV companies.

AT&T began selling its U-Verse TV service months ago in Texas, California and other markets. The company has signed up 51,000 TV customers, up from 13,000 at the end of March.

"It's a nice situation for the consumer," said Elroy Jopling, a research director in Toronto for the Gartner research firm.

AT&T is a big company with deep pockets that can afford to break into the TV market. "The next few years will be kind of fun for TV viewers as they sit back, relax and decide who really wants their business," Jopling said.

Though some analysts question how the investment will play out for consumers, the industry thinks it is part of a competitive victory.

Phone companies "have spotted consumer demand for bundled services and are investing in the equipment to provide it," said Carole Woodward, chief executive of the N.C. Telecommunications Industry. The trade group was instrumental last year in persuading North Carolina lawmakers to pass new legislation.

In July 2006, after heavy lobbying, state lawmakers passed rules that made it easier for phone companies to offer TV service. The law, passed ostensibly to spur competition and investment, allows phone companies to get a statewide video license, rather than having to negotiate with multiple municipalities.

But even with the added competition, there might not be many new service offerings, analysts said. That's because AT&T isn't entering an underserved market so much as providing more of what is already being offered. If it doesn't, consumers will continue their exodus from traditional phone service to packages offered through Internet rivals and cable-TV providers such as Time Warner.

For now, "it's a defensive move to stop cable operators from getting people to switch over their services," said Vince Vittore, an analyst with Boston-based technology consulting firm Yankee Group.

Once AT&T has a better grasp on its network capabilities, it will likely announce slightly more competitive services, Vittore said.

Steve Notes: According to Wikipedia "AT&T U-verse is the brand name for a group of services provided over Internet Protocol (IP), including television service, Internet access, and eventually voice telephoneservice. The new services are carried on phone lines (or over fiber to the customer's premises), and are enabled by AT&T’s initiative to push fiber-optic lines closer to customers’ premises." To read more go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-verse or https://uverse1.att.com/launchAMSS.do

Fusion splicer targets industrial sector

Some non-telecom information for you. Large core fiber...

July 30, 2007 -- Fujikura Europe Ltd. has introduced a fusion splicer especially designed to support the increasing use of fiber-optic technology in industrial applications. With Large Diameter Fiber (LDF) splicing capability, the company says its new LDF series of products is able to splice all types of fiber currently available.

According to the company, the LDF product range, with a smaller footprint than products currently available in this market, can perform accurate, reliable splices using an arc fusion technique, thereby eliminating the need for external gas supply. A graphical user interface enables users to program the products' automated alignment system, reducing user error when splicing complex fibers, such as polarization maintaining fiber.

"Fiber-optic technology now underpins a vast number of industrial products and applications, from fiber laser manufacture to welding and cutting on car production lines, and biomedical processes such as laser eye surgery," comments Fernando Terceiro, splicer business team leader at Fujikura Europe. "To serve these markets effectively, splicers must be compact, cost-effective and user-friendly, as operators may have to work with different types of fiber, in many different environments, often without specific training or experience in fiber processing."

The company says the splicers are designed for OEMs, R&D establishments, the medical industry, automotive industry, fiber laser manufacturers and universities. The products are equipped with wide view cameras to focus on the whole image of the maximum diameter LDF, and employ a high power arc discharge unit, coupled with modified electrodes to withstand the high current. The splicers also include new attenuation modes for polarization maintaining fibers.

Fujikura's complete splicer portfolio will be on display at the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) 2007, to be held September 17-19 at the Internationales Congress Centrum, Berlin.

Qwest Deploys New Optical Technology In Nationwide Network

7/31/2007

Tulsa, OK - Qwest Communications International Inc. has announced upgrades to its nationwide fiber-optic network that quadruple broadband capacity for customers and triple geographic availability of ultra-high-speed services, claim Qwest representatives. When combined with Qwest's Metro Ethernet or Private Line services, the upgrade provides an end-to-end, cost-efficient, high-bandwidth connection delivering speeds scalable from 1 to 40 Gbits/sec, says the carrier.

Qwest says the upgrade of its national network to ultra-long-haul (ULH) technology, which is software configurable, already is benefiting businesses, government agencies, and wholesale customers by providing:

• A dedicated broadband transport network without the capital investment and expense of owning and operating network infrastructure;
• Full availability of ultra-high-speed services with access points in all major U.S. business centers and extensive global connectivity;
• Faster service provisioning and increased agility with the ability to deploy, activate, reconfigure, and manage traffic remotely; and
• The ability to aggregate and transport traffic over standard communications interfaces, including Ethernet and SONET.

"The spike in demand for bandwidth-intensive applications makes high-capacity, easily scalable connections vital for customers," explains Tom Richards, executive vice president of the Qwest business markets group. "This upgrade ensures Qwest will continue to provide customers the bandwidth and capabilities they need now and in the future over one of the most extensive, state-of-the-art networks in the world."

Qwest QWave services provided via the high-capacity ULH network offer customers a great alternative to purchasing or leasing dark fiber, says the carrier. Today businesses, including U.S. Bancorp and Telefonica, have chosen the enhanced QWave services enabled by the upgrade.

"Because Qwest's existing national network is a newer, high-performance, high-capacity network, the move to ULH has been fast, efficient, and relatively surgical from a capital investment standpoint," reports Pieter Poll, Qwest's chief technology officer. "We are simply upgrading existing fiber routes and expanding our nationwide points of presence." The ULH upgrade also supports continued scalability of Qwest IP services nationwide, and further augments ultra-high-bandwidth connectivity for customers to Qwest hosting centers, says the carrier.