Business

TeraXion, a provider of optical components and modules, and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) have announced a strategic partnership that it says will lead to the development and fabrication of TeraXion’s new modulator products family.

The company says the agreement covers its next-generation Indium Phosphide high-speed modulators for coherent transmission systems at 100 Gb/s and beyond. Work will take place at NRC’s Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre in Ottawa.

The UK government is being petitioned to provide a 'true national fibre optic network' instead of going ahead with the controversial HS2 rail system.

The petition on the HM Government E-petition website, created by 'broadband activist' Matthew Coutts, states: 'The plans for the HS2 (High Speed 2) rail project should be completely scrapped in favour of developing a national true fibre optic broadband network to make the UK one of the fastest and best connected countries in the world with a future-proof technology in place.

The new Australian coalition government is planning to change the development of the country's national broadband network, from a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network to a fibre-to-node network.

The new plan, pledged by the newly elected government, will use copper cables from the national network provider Telstra's to connect households to the fibre network.

Farice, the main provider of international capacity from Iceland to mainland Europe, has deployed Ciena’s 100G coherent optical transport technology to upgrade its submarine cable system that connects Iceland and Scotland.

UTEL, a research and development company for telecommunications systems, has developed a new complete fibre network management system based on its Fast Light technology. The system will be launched at ECOC 2013.
 
Fast Light, the foundation of the new Operational Support System (OSS) from UTEL, was launched last year and is a central office OTDR fibre test system that the company says can reliably detect ONT reflections through 128 split PONs without expensive wavelength dependent reflectors.
 

Vodafone and Orange are to bring fibre to the home (FTTH) to some 800,000 households in 12 Spanish cities, following an agreement with the local telecoms operator Telefonica.

The three companies set up a network-sharing agreement in July, allowing Vodafone and Orange to connect their horizontal networks to Telefonica's installations within buildings. The FTTH networks will be connected in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Malaga, Valencia, Alicante, Zaragoza, Cordoba, Valladolid, Alcorcon, Badalona and Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Global spending on optical networking (ON) is growing steadily, according to analyst firm Ovum.

The company says that results of $4.08 billion for the second quarter of 2013 were 29 percent higher than they were in the first quarter of the year, and seven percent higher than the second quarter of 2012. Annualised spending grew to $14.9 billion.  

Chinese companies led the way. ZTE had its strongest quarter ever, solidifying its position behind Huawei as the second-ranked ON vendor. Annualised spending in Asia-Pacific, at over US$6bn, reached record levels.

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.