Steve, I guess I should have gone win, place and show on this one. Good call, kinda.
Makes sense to me that TLAB would be the acquirer, given the prowess shown by the other digital cross-connect companies (LU, NT, Alcatel, etc.). CIEN will assist TLAB with their optical gateway component in the d.c.s. arena, and allow it to more easily proceed with its optical cross connect plans. BTW, isn't TLABs the one who purchased the IBM TJ Watson Jr. crew that did all of the work on Project Rainbow, one of the forerunners to the MONET Project and other optical platforms that were responsible for establishing much of the WDM enthusiasm in the first place? I think that George Gilder speaks to the latter, if my memory is correct, in his "Beyond the Fiber Sphere" treatment.
The spectre of a LU-CSCO rivalry is heightened further when one considers that Cisco would even contemplate a Layer One (and below) play. In some ways it could be argued that promoting Layer One efficiencies by a router company is akin to an IP hegemonist tau tauing to the ATM crowd. But acquiring CIEN would merely throw a 'd' into the word hegemonist, rendering it an "hedgemonist," as Cisco has demonstrated in a classic way it is capable of, when it acquired Stratacom.
I see an otherwise "natural-enemy" syndrome of a kind taking place here, in other words, by a router company going after a fiber company, but this is exactly what they must do in order to compete across the board. I say natural enemy because a router is often measured by how well it handles in a bandwidth restricted environment. DWDM, OTOH, clears the trees, so to speak, and reduces the impact of a router's advantages, in this regard.
BTW, how does all of this play with FON's announcement yesterday? Anyone?
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
