Turning the fat pipe into a smart
pipe
The world of fibre-optics technology is still
in its infancy and there are many important
issues to resolve, Bert Hill reports.
Bert Hill
The Ottawa Citizen
The latest advances in fibre-optic research will boost capacity to more than
three trillion bits per second or enough capacity to move the contents of the
Library of Parliament across Canada in two seconds.
Most systems don't need all that raw capacity but they do need smarter
pipes, particularly in cities and local neighbourhood situations.
William Magill, a venture capitalist with TeleSoft Partners, writing for Fiber
Optics Online, said "There is no networking in optical networking today.
Current products offer loads of bandwidth but little intelligence and no
network-wide view of operations."
That means a signal going from St. John's to Vancouver is like an airline from
the '40s which must stop in Toronto and Winnipeg, forcing customers to
check and recheck bags and buy new tickets at each stop.
"The process is slow, and you don't know the status of seat or even flight
availability ahead of each leg," Mr. Magill said. "Hopefully you get a low
fare."
Winfried Horsthuis, a JDS Uniphase vice-president, said: "Developing an
intelligent network that allows switching along the fibre is the holy grail of the
industry, but it is not clear what shape it will eventually take.
"The challenge for us is not to pick winners, but to try to keep the spiral of
change of expanding bandwidth, new technical solutions and reduced costs
moving upward."
The All-Optic Network
One of the biggest costs is the requirement to constantly convert electrical
signals into light signals and back again. It is this reliance on electronics and
semi-conductors that generates about 70 per cent of the cost.
Nortel, Lucent and many tiny start-up companies are working on solutions to
this issue and some important progress has been made developing optical
switches along the system to manage traffic.
But no clear winner has yet emerged and much research still has to be done
at the key on- and off-loading sections of the network.
Bringing Fibre Home
The current technology is superb at moving large quantities of traffic across
long distances, but it is expensive getting it into major urban areas and still
more difficult getting it into homes.
Gerry Lynch, president of Photonics Research Ontario, said: "A year ago we
were talking about bring fibre to the house. Now we are talking about
bringing it to the pillow. The technology to do that isn't in place yet, but we're
looking at what will be the next trillion-dollar industry."
Managing Growth
The biggest challenge of successful companies is not getting swamped by the
growth. JDS Uniphase CEO Kevin Kalkhoven said his company is "50 per
cent bigger than all our competitors combined and growing 50-per-cent
faster."
With demand for fibre-optic gear expected to quadruple to $21 billion U.S.
in 2003, the market share of independent producers like JDS will probably
grow at an even faster rate.
The reason is that systems producers like Siemens and Ericsson sold their
component operations. The market share of independent producers like JDS
could grow from 50 to 70 per cent.
Finding Enough Brain Power
Fibre optics, according to Prof. Arthur Guenther, a leading authority at the
University of New Mexico, "is the orphan child of technology. The shortfall
in the industry is in the hundreds of thousands of people."
Europe has traditionally been a power house in fibre-optic research and
training. But there are only five U.S. universities including the University of
Rochester generating fibre-optic engineers -- though many schools have
strong specialities. Laval University in Quebec City, the University of
Toronto and several other universities in southern Ontario have teaching and
research capability. There is only limited capability in Ottawa's two
universities, although Carleton Unversity recently transformed its physics
department into an applied research school with financial assistance from
JDS Uniphase.
"How many fibre-optics engineers are going to graduate in Ontario and
Canada?" asked Josef Straus, co-chair of JDS. "Not enough. I could use 50
right now."
Laval's strength in photonics has already made Montreal a budding power in
fibre-optics.
Martin Boehlke, a representative with Coherent Laboratories, a major laser
maker based in California, said: "Montreal is developing a group of small
companies that could be the size of JDS in five years."
Capacity
The development of a significant fibre-optics hardware industry in Ottawa
could also bring the downside: periodic booms and busts created by excess
capacity. The semiconductor industry is just now emerging from the latest of
many such downturns.
The current worldwide boom in fibre expansion should continue for a few
more years because of huge demand and ambitious plans of many new
companies. But a new study by the Yankee Group found that, in several
major Canadian cities, there is enough capacity to handle current demand.
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