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To: D. K. G. who wrote (1709)	1/11/2001 9:46:56 PM
From: D. K. G.	Respond to of 46821

Launch Pad Feature telecommagazine.com A Snapshot Of Emerging Companies High Wattage Bedford, Mass.-based optical start-up PhotonEx has ambitions of establishing itself as leader in the network core. Although the company currently is saying little, it has promised to deliver a platform that not only will meet the triple challenge of distance, speed and channel density, but--via its software---also be "services aware" to respond to unpredictable traffic demands. PhotonEx expects to announce product details this quarter and, when the product ships during the second half of the year, it will support 40-Gbps wavelengths. Much of PhotonEx's intellectual capital is made up of its three founders who are also the company's top executives--Kristin Rauschenbach, CEO; Katherine Hall, CTO; and Nanying Yin, executive vice president of product development. Rauschenbach and Hall come out of M.I.T.'s Lincoln Lab where Rauschenbach established the Advanced Networks Group. She and Hall pioneered BoSSNET, a next-gen Internet that pumped 10 Gbps over a distance of 1600 km on Qwest fiber. In the lab, they were able to push 10 Gbps more than 10,000 km. Yin was formerly director of Nortel Networks' Internet core router group and before that was a consulting engineer for Wellfleet and Bay Networks. PhotonEx has raised $88 million through two rounds of funding and currently has about 140 employees. The company has also drawn on some heavy outside help. External directors on its board include Hassan Ahmed, president and CEO of Sonus, and Paul Severino, chairman of NetCentric and formerly president and CEO of Wellfleet/Bay. Strategic advisors include Cheng Wu, founder and CEO of ArrowPoint (acquired by Cisco); Erich Ippen, president of the Optical Society of America, and Hermann Haus, a President's National Science Medal holder and institute professor at M.I.T. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Simpler Solution Ocular Network has positioned itself in the metro access space with a solution that allows service providers to offer TDM, ATM or IP services in a nondisruptive and economical manner. While other products might require a specific switch for each type of traffic, Ocular claims that its Metro Business Access (MBA) architecture is the first optical transport solution that uses a single switch for all three types. Even better, the Ocular platform provides both switching and transport between native TDM and data automatically based on traffic input. Ocular's flexible architecture reduces the concerns that a service provider might have regarding whether it has the right mix of hardware in every system in the network to handle customers' different and changing demands. Aside from supporting any traffic mix, the company claims the MBA architecture means no truck rolls to swap out hardware and--as a bottom line--a 75-percent reduction in lifetime capital and operating costs. Ocular has developed five ASICs and holds four patents, including one for what the company calls its Dynamic Bandwidth Sharing Protocol. This is a mechanism for apportioning bandwidth between TDM and data traffic at the byte level while not compromising the quality of TDM services or the efficiency of data services. It also maintains jitter and delay requirements for TDM services. Details about the Ocular product, which was scheduled to be in lab trials by the end of 2000, are expected to be released during the first half of this year. The company was founded in October 1999 and had about 100 employees in December. Ocular raised $20 million in its first round of funding. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unwired Bundling When Paul Struhsaker, CTO and senior vice president of engineering for Richardson, Texas-based Raze Technologies could not get DSL in his 11-year old house, his wife encouraged him to solve this problem with a new company. Seeing DSL's limitations first hand, he opted to take the unwired route via fixed broadband wireless. Unlike other fixed broadband wireless data-only solution vendors such as ADC, Aperto, Cisco and Hybrid, Raze's technology enables service providers to bundle both voice and data via a NLOS (non-line-of-sight) wireless link. While other service providers have developed and implemented LMDS-based systems, which typically cost $3000 to $5000 per installation, Raze claims it can bring that cost to under $500 per subscriber. To achieve NLOS, Raze uses software radio technology that is reconfigurable to the 802.16 wireless MAN standard. The system can operate in all three of the primary fixed wireless bands: UNII (universal national information infrastructure) 5.8 GHz, FWA (fixed wireless access) 3.5 GHz and MMDS at 2.5 GHz. Service providers can obtain 10 Mbps of capacity per six-sector segment. Subscribers can have two to four voice channels and a 10/100 Base T data link with optional T1/E1 expansion modules. After the company was incorporated in June 2000, it closed initial funding through LM Wireless solutions L.P., a Dallas-based venture capitalist focused on telecom investing. Raze Technologies' management team consists of telecom veterans from the ranks of Alcatel, Cisco, Motorola, Nortel, Perkin Elmer and Samsung. Rollout plans include alpha testing in Q2, beta testing in June and field trials in Q3. General availability is scheduled for midyear..