Tom, why you would direct technical questions to others on this thread rather to Surfer Mike is more than a wee bit offensive. But, I will make an exception, get over my smashed ego, and tell you what's the haps:
George Gilder's vision of the "dark and dumb network" depends on replacing current infrastructure with all optical networks (AON). As you know, this is deemed threatening for the guys who make intelligent switching boxes which sit in the center/core of the network (TLAB's comes to mind) cause you don't need a whole hunk of central intelligence in a dumb network. Ergo, short TLAB, LU, and all the other switch makers.
At TLAB's 3rd qtr CC a few months back, the analysts were all over Michael Birck with questions that essentially emphasized the 'dumb and dark network' threat, and the potential devastation on TLAB. You also probably also know that TLAB purchased the most advanced Optical Networking brains in the business when they snagged IBM's division, lock, stock, and erlang. Not to quit there, TLAB also picked up Steinbrecher (sp?) which has some fancy radio frequency technology that Gilder thinks is way cool and fits right in with dumb and dark, AON, etc.
Birck's response was a classic-- he not so subtly told the analysts that (a) if anybody knew what was going on in AON, dumb and dark, TLAB did, that they had spent and would continue to spend beaucoup dinero, would be on the leading edge, and would be ready and (b) that that time was at least a couple of years, as in 4 or 5, down the road, so cool your jets boys. Birck said that not only was the technology not "there", the market was really not "there"--and that there weren't no way jose that central telecom switches were gonna get jerked in the next few minutes to install Gilder's latest toys--something about reliability if I caught his drift. The big telecoms don't dig it when their systems go down.
Now, you probably caught the action in CIEN today and yesterday--hammer city cuz the big bad boys at LU just announced some AON stuff that supposedly will blow CIEN's doors off. So, AON ain't no pipe dream and Gilder probably has the general direction just about right--but timing, so near and dear to greedly little stockholder's wallets, is another matter.
As for the implications for the Q, well I don't want to steal the dog's bones and will gracefully step aside and let him howl.
How about them photons--orthogonal or what? Surfer Mike |
