Business

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.

VI Systems, a provider of ultra-high speed components for data communications, has acquired an exclusive license to the US patent 8,472,496 – Optoelectronic Device and Method of Making Same – for applications in optical data communications, sensing, and illumination using vertical cavity light–emitting diode structures.

Independent fibre structure providers should be allowed to fill in gaps left by BT, according to a report by the House of Commons Rural Affairs Committee.

Rural businesses, schools and households have fallen behind their urban counterparts when it comes to broadband access, according to the Rural Communities report published today. The roll-out of superfast broadband to 90 per cent of rural areas will be delivered late, and it is unclear when the target of universal access to 2Mbps broadband will be achieved.

New data shows a fast increase in broadband adoption in OECD countries – with a particularly steep acceleration in the use of fibre.

Figures just released for the international economic organisation of 34 countries, for the year to December 2012, show a steady trend increase in fibre adoption – with the share of fibre subscriptions in fixed broadband increasing to 14.9 per cent (up to 48.7 million fibre broadband lines). Fibre grew by 12.7 per cent in 2012, four times as much as fixed broadband at 3.27 per cent.