Maybe there's Life after all
dailynews.yahoo.com
Seeds for Optenia were planted four years ago, under a joint fiber-optic research project between Mitel and the National Research Council of Canada.
To capitalize on a technical breakthrough that came this summer, Mitel decided to start a company that could push product development to meet its July target for sample chip delivery.
In August, Mitel produced working prototypes of a chip that is designed to create more channels, or traffic lanes, on a single fiber-optic strand, to carry voice, data and video traffic on optical networks.
The device can cram as many as 80 channels or wavelengths onto a strand of glass using standard semiconductor materials, cutting costs by three to five times, Mitel said.
``We view this to be the next wave...in terms of making the Internet available to the world's 6.5 billion people,'' said Moris Simson, who leaves his job as Mitel's senior vice president to become Optenia chief executive. Mitel chief executive Kirk Mandy will also sit on Optenia's board of directors.
Optenia has 25 staff from Mitel and the National Research Council, but expects to employ 100 a year from now. The new company will target optical system suppliers such as Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE:NT - news) (Toronto:NT.TO - news), Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LU - news) and CIENA Corp. (NasdaqNM:CIEN - news) as customers. |
