Anyone heard of these people?
Got a nanosecond?
Just about everyone knows by now that bandwidth is the bottleneck of the networking revolution. Fiber-optic cables being installed by cable and telecom companies today nicely broaden the "pipe" carrying bits of data from Bigfat Co.'s Web server to the PC on your desk. Yet the cables' capabilities are limited by the speed of the chips and switches that sort and propel the bits along the way.
Enter now a private company called Nanovation Technologies that proposes to eliminate digital gridlock by introducing new networking semiconductors and switches powered by speedy pulses of light rather than pokey old electrons. A reader named McNally, writing from British Columbia, suggested this one, noting that the firm is "not listed, but on the bottom rung of the electronic to photonic computer transformation. Important patents in place."
Some sleuthing at the Miami-based company's Web site revealed that a solid management team is taking shape: Top executives, many hired in the past year, hail from high-level jobs at Lucent Technologies (LU), IBM (IBM) and Tellabs(TLAB). The firm owns patents on key fiber-optic switching and laser technology created by professors at Northwestern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As early as next year, its intellectual property will be turned into photonic chips and switches that are intended to replace electronic chips and switches in telecom equipment built by companies such as Ciena (CIEN) and Tellabs. These devices ultimately should be 100 times smaller
and 1,000 times faster than the current state of the art.
In an interview Tuesday, marketing chief Michael Hassebrock said he left his job as director of product planning at Lucent in July because the market for photonic equipment "is just emerging just like the transistor was in the '40s and'50s." He asserted that much of the "dark", or unlit, fiber laid today in cities by companies such as Metromedia Fiber Network (MFNX) and Level 3 Communications (LVLT) will become economically viable only when photonic switches are installed. Nanovation plans to offer stock to the public by June 2000, in a deal underwritten by Salomon Smith Barney. If the patents hold out, the products work and the marketing is good -- three giant "ifs" -- I'll reserve a 16th spot on my decade-portfolio list for the company. Says McNally: "If photonic technology is sound, Intel is history, or will purchase the patents." |
