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Technology Stocks : Quantum Bridge Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sydney who wrote (6)	11/29/1999 3:15:00 PM
From: Elmer Flugum	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42

Any Way You Slice It Passive optics serve up wavelength splices internettelephony.com ELIZABETH STARR MILLER The gap between last-mile copper and fiber runs wide for small and medium-sized businesses caught in the shadow of tall, shiny buildings. Linking onto a Sonet ring can cost a small fortune, while DSL doesn't offer enough bandwidth for some customers. But by using inexpensive passive optical networking splitters and couplers, and an optical access platform that splices wavelengths, one company found a way to bridge that gap. Quantum Bridge's optical access platform splices individual wavelengths and offers bandwidth to customers, giving them just what they need, rather than too much or not enough. With one pair of fibers, the platform can offer variable bandwidth rates to 32 customers. Usually service providers install expensive add/drop multiplexers to link a building to a Sonet ring. But with the Quantum Bridge platform, the service provider would install passive optical splitters and couplers to fan out the bandwidth to customers instead. Service providers then would install Quantum Bridge's intelligent optical terminal equipment at the customer premises and an optical access switch at the central office. Although high-bandwidth options for small and medium-sized businesses used to be DSL, T-1 or T-3, now the range is 1 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s, said Jeff Gwynne, vice president of marketing for Quantum Bridge. "This allows us to ship bandwidth dynamically to satisfy hot spots. Customers can drink as much as they want, and the equipment can handle it. Service providers can scale up and down accordingly." The platform is ideal for clusters of office buildings filled with start-ups, Gwynne said. As a young company grows, it will require more and more bandwidth. Eventually, the office will become too small, and the company will have to move. The process begins again when another start-up with minimal bandwidth requirements moves in. Splitting wavelengths results in "an enormous cost savings," said Andrew Cray, research analyst for The Aberdeen Group. It's a way to reach customers who otherwise can't afford Sonet but need more speed than DSL provides, he said. When it comes to network architecture, carriers won't need to change the way they build their networks, Gwynne said. Instead, what kinds of customers they can serve will change. "Before carriers could only go to the tall, shiny buildings," he said. The platform will give carriers an opportunity to serve clusters of buildings. And as carriers deploy services to one user, they will have the chance to go after other customers in the same building. "They'll be able to gain market share quickly," Gwynne added. Although Cray said there is a "definite demand" for Quantum Bridge's platform in the market of customers stuck between copper and Sonet, it won't work for everyone. Internet super carrier PSINet doesn't need the technology for its current customer base, said Mark Fedor, vice president of engineering for PSINet. If a customer requires a 15 to 20 Mb/s connection, PSINet "runs a DS-3 and clocks it down," Fedor said. For 45 Mb/s links, PSINet also runs out a coaxial DS-3. To deliver 100 Mb/s speeds, PSINet uses 100BaseT and plans to use gigabit Ethernet connections. "For a high-performance connection, it's not a big deal to run fiber to the building. And the cost to run coax is not that much of an issue," he said. The Quantum Bridge platform may have an advantage with its remote provisioning capabilities, made possible by software developed by the company. The platform's load balancing capabilities will be interesting to service providers, Cray said. "It can add bandwidth to one business while taking away from another." Passive optical networking has been researched for 10 years, Cray said, adding that BT was the first to try it over fiber to the home. But the technology never took off. "Quantum Bridge has developed an integrated solution," he said. "It's cost-justifiable for most customers as the next step up from copper."