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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Douglas Nordgren who wrote (23455)	8/31/2000 6:21:42 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42804

Some information about Wind River Home page wrs.com about Wind River "Wind River Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:WIND) is a leading provider of embedded software and services for smart devices in the Internet age. Wind River software is used in conjunction with embedded, or hidden, microprocessors that make up over 90% of all computer chips sold today. Embedded systems made up of hardware and software are found in numerous end products from laser printers to automotive braking systems to control panels in fighter jets. Wind River allows customers to create reliable, complex, real-time applications more quickly and with less risk than creating such applications internally. Wind River provides software development tools, real-time operating systems, and advanced connectivity for use in products throughout the Internet, telecommunications and data communications, digital imaging, networking, medical, computer peripherals, automotive, industrial measurement and control (IMC), and aerospace/defense markets." about Wind River Ventures "Wind River Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Wind River. The group invests in early-stage technology companies that are enabling the next generation of connected, smart devices. Target companies are in the areas of wireless communications, data/optical networking, semiconductors, communications software, Internet appliance devices, and other high-growth opportunities that are strategically aligned with Wind River." "Wind River Ventures targets early stage, mezzanine, and pre-IPO companies, which have reached the prototype stage, have a complete business plan, and a seasoned management team in place. While the financial return is very important to us, target portfolio companies should demonstrate that there is a substantive technological and/or market synergy with Wind River's business, and that the company and Wind River can leverage each others capabilities to exploit the market opportunity. Any company that develops and/or incorporates the use of smart software solutions is a candidate for funding. Our typical investments range from $500,000 to $2,000,000, although at times we will consider larger opportunities." wrs.com

To: Douglas Nordgren who wrote (23455)	8/31/2000 7:40:47 PM
From: Dee Jay	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42804

Douglas, in the same issue there's an FTTH (fiber to the home) story which features Marconi's approach (and don't they incorporate MRV's technology?) see: eoenabled.com "Fiber to the Home Resurfaces By Craig Matsumoto EE Times (08/31/00, 6:06 p.m. EST) DENVER — A number of companies are laying the groundwork to offer residential fiber on a broad scale as early as next year, according to this week's National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC). This trend indicates that the advent of high-speed data access has revived interest in fiber to the home, after huge costs and an indifferent public had dashed initial hopes for the technology. BellSouth began offering fiber to the home this year, and company researchers said they expect sales to pick up in 2001. Meanwhile, equipment providers such as Marconi Corp. plc and OnePath Networks Inc. were at NFOEC to show off complete fiber-to-the-home architectures. All three use passive optical splitting to distribute the high-speed signal to individual homes. Given the lack of standards for fiber to the home, all three have developed architectures that include equipment both for the central office and for the home itself. Some initiatives within the Full Services Access Networks forum are discussing fiber-optic transmission to the home, but they don't include video. "So, we believe they are aimed at the SoHo [small-office/home-office] or midrange businesses, but not at the home," said Ken Neighbors, vice president of worldwide marketing for OnePath. Interest in fiber to the home is increasing simply because costs have fallen enough to make the idea feasible. "The only reason there wasn't fiber to the home before is because you couldn't meet cost requirements for the service providers to make money," Neighbors said. "The phone companies would run a fiber to every home if they could." BellSouth first studied fiber to the home in 1989 but decided the costs were too high and the demand too low. The addition of data and video traffic to fiber-optic feeds, however, has sparked new interest in the technology. A presentation by Glenn Mahony, a senior member of BellSouth's exploratory technical group, outlined the regional Bell operating companies' fiber-to-the-home plans. The architecture that BellSouth tested in 400 homes last year consisted of a two-cable feed — one line for data and one for cable TV. The cables used a 1,550-nanometer wavelength of light for the downstream feed and 1,310 nm for the upstream feed. Telephony wasn't included in the trials. Both fiber-optic feeds went through two stages of splitters. The first stage divided the feed into 10 streams that reached poles or pedestals for particular neighborhoods. Those streams were then subdivided into three streams to reach individual houses. Different types of cabling were used at each stage. Standard fiber-optic cables stretched from the central office to the first splitting stage. From there, "distribution fiber" was used to reach the second splitting stage, where signals were assigned to specific homes. Two cables would connect to each home through a BellSouth fiber interface device on the outside of the structure. From there, specially characterized inside cable would carry the signal to the optical network terminal inside the home and then to PCs and television sets. The lack of standards for the technology prompted BellSouth to develop much of its own equipment and, for parts of the architecture, characterize its own fiber-optic cable, Mahony said. BellSouth made its first commercial sale of the architecture in June and hopes to begin volume sales in 2001, but a few touch-ups will be needed. Perhaps most important is that the separate data and video cables add up to an expensive installation and will have to be combined in order to make volume deployment possible, Mahony said. Marconi displayed its own home-fiber product at the show: a box capable of delivering voice and video traffic, cable TV and data. Marconi's architecture also splits the fiber-optic feed in two, but it uses only one cable: Coarse wave division multiplexing assigns video feeds to the 1,550-nm wavelength and voice and data to 1,310 nm. The system gets its feed from Marconi equipment installed at the central office. From there to the home, the signals travel across an all-passive network, meaning the optical signals are not converted into electrical bits and bytes until they reach their destination. Marconi's solution, like BellSouth's, first delivers the signal to the general neighborhood and then uses a splitter to send feeds to individual residences. The home receives a 10 Base T Ethernet feed for data, cable or set-top video (depending on the service provider's preference), and multiple lines of telephony. Marconi has three trials ready to start by the end of the year and claims to have received eight orders for the system..."