ardethan: An area of potential in "telecom" - today's and tomorrow's, or more specifically - the fiber optics industry:
(Note: Only for those interested in fiber, etc. - suggest others skip)
<<<EYE ON OPTICS
Fiber, laser technologies expected to trigger new telecom revolution
By Bruce V. Bigelow
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 22, 2001
ANAHEIM -- Signs of an economic slowdown seemed far away as the fiber optics industry gathered at the Anaheim Convention Center earlier this week for its annual conference.
Optical optimists bustling on the convention floor said they expect new breakthroughs in laser and fiber technologies to trigger another revolution in telecommunications.
"We're really still at the beginning," said Dana Cooperson of RHK, a consulting firm that analyzes the telecommunications market. "We haven't reached the Emerald City yet."
If attendance serves as any measure, then the business of transmitting light pulses through glass fibers is drawing more interest than ever.
More than 38,000 people registered for the three-day Optical Fiber Communication conference, which began Monday. In contrast, about 18,000 attended last year's conference in Baltimore, and roughly 9,000 came to San Diego for the 1999 meeting.
With the size of the conference doubling each year, some observers say the fiber optics industry is starting to show the kind of "hypergrowth" that has occurred in other high-tech sectors.
Cooperson estimates the total market for optical technologies will hit $111 billion by 2004, compared to $42 billion in 2000. She predicted that 2001, however, will be a year of "recalibration and focus."
With the Nasdaq down by two-thirds and many big telecommunications companies now limping under heavy debt and eroding margins, analysts expect that capital spending on costly new technologies will be cautious.
"The most important challenge in telecom right now is the inability of service providers to make money -- or at least much money," analyst Lawrence Gasman told an overflow crowd Tuesday.
The industry is caught in a vexing dilemma, analysts said. Big telecommunications companies get most of their revenues from voice-based services. But most of the traffic flooding across their networks is computer-based data -- and that percentage is increasing.
"The pricing schemes they have for data right now are very much antiquated," said Scott Clavenna of Point East Research in Cambridge, Mass. He predicts that telecom carriers will shift to what he called "packet intelligent" components, which enable companies to set new fee schedules for data traffic.
Under conflicting pressures to cut costs and increase network capacity, the carriers will buy technologies that offer the greatest flexibility in their efforts to optimize network capacity and efficiency, analysts said.
Such concerns were not evident however, as inventors, investors and industry executives crowded around corporate booths at the convention center.
"What you're seeing doesn't reflect what's happening in the stock market this month," said Eli Yablonovitch, an optics expert and professor of electrical engineering at UCLA. "Many business plans were made long before this conference."
Of almost 980 companies that exhibited wares at the conference, more than 20 are based in the San Diego area -- prompting venture investor Franz Birkner of Encinitas to describe the region as a "national leader" in optical networking.
"The optical networking industry is maybe 30 or 40 years behind the wireless industry in terms of development," said Birkner. "This is a classic, early-stage nascent industry."
To shed some light on San Diego's technical prowess, Birkner invited six local companies to make presentations tonight at the San Diego Telecom Council meeting, which begins at 5 p.m. at the Hilton Torrey Pines. The panel consists of executives from OMM, IPITEK, Sorrento Networks, LightPointe Communications, AirFiber and Optical Access Corp.
"This is not an industry based on hype," Birkner said. "It's an industry based on a real need for bandwidth."
While it is true that data moves at the speed of light through 78 million miles of fiber deployed in the U.S., a host of network bottlenecks continue to strangle the giga-flow of information.
Recent advances in optical switches, "tunable" lasers and other devices promise to eliminate many of those chokeholds, experts said.
"The underlying applications are really strong," said Milton Chang, an engineer-turned-entrepreneur who was a seed investor in optical components maker JDS Uniphase.
"The real issue is getting your target market to adopt new technology," said John Griffin, chief executive of LightPointe Communications.
The company was formed in late 1998 to develop laser-based systems for transmitting high-speed data in urban areas. LightPointe already faces competition from two San Diego companies with similar technology: AirFiber and Optical Access.
"What's driving the optical revolution is not in big boxes," said Birkner, the venture investor. It's the components -- the lasers and the laser receivers, amplifiers and filters.
"The boom is happening -- the fall in the Nasdaq not withstanding and what's happening to the carriers notwithstanding," Birkner said. "This is going forward because these are important enabling technologies. And we're going to do in optics what we did in wireless communications." >>>
Best.
Cha2 |
