It took me half the night, but I finally found OCI's website:
intopt.com
intopt.com
IOC background:
IOC International plc designs, develops, manufactures and markets high-speed optoelectronic components.
The company's leading edge products have established IOC as a significant supplier of enabling technologies for the seemingly insatiable fibre optic telecommunications industry. IOC is well placed to meet the industry's demands.
History
Integrated Optical Components Limited was founded in 1991 with financial backing from three of Europe's largest venture capital companies. The brainchild of two leading members of GEC Marconi Research, IOC was established to develop commercial applications for the then, relatively unexploited material, lithium niobate. Having established a niche market in leading edge components for the telecommunications industry, the company raised £7.5 million of new finance in March 1996 via a successful IPO. The company currently trades on the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market as IOC International plc.
The Market
Since the company's inception, the market for high-speed fibre optic components has experienced substantial growth. Macro environmental factors such as the deregulation of the telecom industry, particularly in the US, establishment of the World Wide Web and the increasing popularity of e-mail and e-commerce have put increasing strain on the fibre optic telecommunication back bone. The emergence of new carriers such as SPRINT and MCI Worldcom alongside established suppliers such as BT, AT&T and Deutsche Bundespost has led to an increasingly competitive environment. In order to compete, the service providers are required to provide an increasing range of services and, most importantly, be able to provide sufficient capacity or bandwidth to meet their customers' demands. New standards such as ADSL, ISDN and Internet Protocol have been established to provide both the consumer and industry with access to more information, more quickly. Since the slip road or on/off ramp to the information superhighway has increased in speed, so the trunk roads have needed to keep pace by increasing their speed of operation, or in the case of WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) the number of lanes. Thus the demand for capacity has doubled every 18 months. RHK forecasts that North American DWDM and Optical Networking spending will rise from $480 million in 1996 to $3 billion in 2002*. In order to avoid what has been termed 'fibre exhaust' (demand exceeding capacity for a given fibre optic link), higher capacity systems have been developed.
IOC developed its first modulator for the telecoms industry in 1992. Initially used in submarine systems, the 2.5 Gb/s modulator is capable of transmitting some 60 000 simultaneous telephone calls on a single fibre optic cable over a distance of 1000 km without the need for sub-sea repeaters. Shortly afterwards, the same product was adopted for use in SONET/SDH terrestrial systems for trunk or long haul applications in both North America and Europe. By 1996 the industry determined that even these data rates were insufficient to fulfill the service providers' demands for bandwidth, and multiple channel systems utilising different colours or wavelengths of light, were developed. These WDM systems offer the advantage of providing 4,8,16 or now even 80 times the capacity on a single fibre. Lithium niobate technology is particularly suited to multiple channel applications due to its wavelength independence.
10 Gb/s systems achieved commercial realisation in 1997 and WDM versions of these systems followed shortly afterwards. Lithium niobate is the 'technology of choice' for 10 Gb/s systems and IOC's 10 G/bs modulator has gained strong customer approval in this market.
The Facility
To meet the demands of the telecom industry, the company has focused on three priority areas:
Capacity
Since the company's successful IPO in 1996, capital investment of more than £5 million has resulted in the successful commission of a new wafer fabrication facility. This comprises approximately 3,000 square feet of class M4 clean room with a capacity in excess of 1/4 million chips per annum fabricated from 3 inch wafers. Device packaging is carried out exclusively under clean room conditions in the adjacent class 1000 clean room, with a total clean room space of 4,400 square feet.
Quality
IOC has been accredited to ISO 9001 since 1994 and continues to maintain a quality system in excess of this quality standard.
Reliability
The hermetic family of modulators exceeds the requirements of Bellcore TR-NWT-00468.
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IOC's board:
intopt.com |
