Business

Bezeq, a leading telecoms provider in Israel, has reported strong financial results on the back of a fast-growing fibre infrastructure in the country.

The company has already provided a fibre infrastructure to around 200,000 households and businesses in the country, with plans to roll out its service fast while investing in faster internet provision for its customers.

Australia-based TPG Telecom has announced its intention to buy fibre capacity on the Australia-US segment of the Hawaiki submarine cable system.

As reported, the 14,000-km cable system will link Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the US west coast and is scheduled for completion in late 2015.

Under the multi-million dollar deal, TPG will acquire fibre capacity from Sydney to the USA, as well as on the Hawaiki trans-Tasman segment from Sydney to Whangarei in Northland, New Zealand.

Seven companies have come together to form a trade association to foster the use of passive optical networking (PON) in local area networks (LANs), reflecting growing interest in the technology.
 
The Association for Passive Optical LAN (APOLAN) was set up by Corning, IBM, SAIC, TE Connectivity, Tellabs, Zhone and 3M. The founder members are all involved in providing infrastructure, electronics, integration, distribution, and consulting services.
 

Wilcon, a provider of fibre optic and data center infrastructure on the West Coast of the USA, has acquired Freedom Dark Fiber Networks, a high-capacity dark fibre provider in southern California. The combined company will constitute one of the largest fibre-optic networks in southern California.

Telekom Austria and the Dutch company KPN International have come together to create one of Europe´s largest fibre networks. The agreement doubles the joint footprint, with 173 Points of Presence (PoP) in 35 countries, and offering a wide range of backbone-based services for international wholesale carriers and large business customer.

Next month’s ECOC (European Conference on Optical Communications) 2013 exhibition, will play host to the Market Focus theatre and see a record number of speakers from market-leading companies such as BT and ViaSat. The exhibition will be held on September 23 to 25 at the ICC London ExCeL.

Now in its eighth successful year the Market Focus, sponsored by Oclaro, will host 29 sessions over three days and be divided into five main topic areas – mass market broadband, high speed optical transmission, data centre networks, optical network agility and optical integration.

Transmode, a provider of packet-optical networking products, has published positive financial results for the second quarter of 2013.

In the three months to June, sales increased to approximately $44.7 million , corresponding to an increase of 8.6 per cent (14.7 per cent adjusted for exchange rate fluctuations) compared to the corresponding quarter in 2012. Net profit was $7.6 million for the quarter.

Semrock has announced that it has appointed James (Jim) Harp as its new business development strategic account manager.

Harp’s primary responsibility will be to focus on Semrock’s high-volume optics business opportunities. With more than a decade of industry sales experience, Jim has previously held senior sales leadership positions with Perkin Elmer, and brings a well-rounded optics background to Semrock. Jim holds a BSc in chemical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara.



New Zealand will soon benefit from its second underwater fibre optic link to the rest of the world, following the completion of a US$350 million deal.

The agreement between Hawaiki Cable and Northland, the region covering the country's north island, will see the cable – which will connect the country to the United States, Australia, and reveal Pacific states – come ashore near the northern town of Whangarei.

Finisar and U2T Photonics have entered a memorandum of understanding with respect to exclusive access to and joint development of all Indium-Phosphide (InP)-based Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) technology developed at the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (HHI).

Under the deal, Finisar and U2T obtain immediate and exclusive access to HHI high speed InP modulators, including polarisation multiplexed I-Q modulators for 100G coherent applications. Concurrently, U2T has acquired all of the assets of COGO Optronics.