Mike, I concur with DT and WTC's overall take on ADC and their current status in the telecom vendor community. Other stuff from ADC that is pretty well liked are their optical splitters, made by the AOFR subsidiary in Australia. They also have a nice uncompressed digital video transport product line (DV 6000), along with a good line of DFB and externally modulated lasers for HFC systems. To answer your question,
<<what is a "fiber patch panel cross connect?" I'm wondering if it's related to the Tellabs, "digital cross-connect" product.>>
No, not really, but the concept is similar. Lots of people see the word "fiber" related to a topic and immediately think of something high tech and complicated. As a physical media, fiber is just a narrow glass pipe that needs special connectors on its ends so that it can be plugged into optical transmitters (lasers) or receivers. A fiber patch panel is part of a fiber distribution frame in a central office or headend. A fiber patch panel is simply a specially designed shelf mounted in a sturdy 7' high steel frame where fiber connectors and jumpers can be stored in a particular sequence. (Sometimes in remote equipment rooms, a small fiber patch panel is wall mounted.) Typically, jumpers from a large number optical transmitter or receiver devices connect to a large quantity of available fibers from cables that transmit light from point A to point B. If these jumpers are not stored in a logical sequence, it gets very complicated to interconnect equipment with the correct cable when large quantities are involved. A fiber cross connect has the identical purpose that a copper pair main distribution frame has in a telephone company central office. The real good fiber cross connect panels let you arrange a large number of fiber connectors and jumpers in a frame, but at the same time manage the slack of the jumpers and let you access the connectors without damaging or stressing adjacent connectors. The weakest, most vulnerable place in an optical network for service interruptions can be at the fiber cross connect frame, if it is not well organized and kept in a fairly orderly state. Fiber patch panel sales quantities correlate directly to the number of fibers that terminate at telco central offices, cable TV headends, equipment rooms, or anywhere else a fiber cable sheath has an end point. Please don't overplay this stuff and figure out if it has anything to do with TDM equip. sales. Besides, fiber cross connect panels are just some sheet metal pieces that get punched, bent, welded, powder coated, with a decal added for decoration. Again, this is not expensive high tech stuff we are talking about here so I would discourage alarming correlations or concerns.
The other term that you used, "digital cross connect" is something different. Digital cross connect products like the Titan involve digital signals that are in an electrical state rather than optical state. Some digital cross connects provide passive cross connects for DS-3 signals which are on coaxial cable jumpers between central office equipment. Other digital cross connects are passive interconnets for DS-1 signals that are on twisted pair within the central office. Other DS-1 cross connects provide software controlled interconnections, and this is most likely the Tellabs Titan product you are thinking of. These are common, mature products available from many sources. With the ongoing explosion in demand for DS-1 services everywhere, I'm not sure I follow how you figure demand for digital cross connects might be drying up. It may shift from one vendor to an alternative, newer, more competitive vendor, but the overall quantity of equipment will continue to grow to meet demand from ILECs, CLECs, IXCs and many others.
Ray.
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