...from Microsoft Investor, Sept. 1999
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." |
