Global Crossing Considers Sale of Assets
The sum total of a buyout by investors might not be in the best interests of the carrier, executives said, but selling off its pieces might get them out of bankruptcy. (more)

Nortel Outlook: Job Cuts, Zero Growth
The telecom equipment maker is cutting 3,500 more jobs in its optical long-haul division on its projected 2002 growth outlook, which is flat at best. (more)

The Cure for Bandwidth Blues?
Intel purchases the tunable laser business of photonics company New Focus in a move to develop its optical networking business. (more)

Teleglobe U.S. Subsidiaries Seek Bankruptcy Protection
Reston, Va.-led companies plan to exit hosting business and focus on core backbone business. (more)

Ciena Expands TD Relationship
Struggling optical networking firm wins contract to answer French long-distance service provider's core switching needs. (more)

Venture Capital News

Quantum Bridge Gains $40M
Andover, Mass.-based Quantum Bridge Communications, which provides optical-access networking technology, secured nearly $40 million in a round of VC financing. The news was reported by VentureWire. Additional details were not immediately available.

Polychromix Sees a $7M First Round
Communications technology concern Polychromix said it has secured $7 million in its first round of funding. Softbank affiliate Seed Capital Partners and Vanguard Ventures co-led the round. Additional first round investors included Navigator Technology Ventures, Pyramid Technology Ventures, Bain & Co., and Hale and Dorr.

The company also announced it is developing modular optical subsystems based on a core technology that will enable dynamically configurable optical networks. Polychromix began operations during the summer of 2001 to develop, manufacture, and sell a full suite of Channel Management Solutions that address the capital-expense and operating-expense challenges that both carriers and network systems vendors face. Polychromix's Channel Management Solutions will enable carriers to dynamically provision and control optical channels remotely from a network operating center, effectively replacing "truck rolls" (sending out maintenance trucks) with "key strokes" (entered at a network operating center terminal), officials said.

All Optics Secures $6M
San Diego-based All Optical Networks announced the closing of a $6 million Series A funding round and the addition of George Cagle to the post of executive vice president of engineering and operations. The funding round, led by ForeFront Capital, will be applied to commercializing AON's MetroScout transparent optical access multiplexer. The MetroScout is based on new "wavelength shift multiplexing" (WSM) technology, which allows all optical translation of data signals from one wavelength to another in the 1310 nanometer regime.

Product News

ADC Rolls Out Single-Mode Fiber Loop Extender
ADC (Quote) announced the availability of its new D3LX fiber optic loop extender designed for use with its Soneplex T1 delivery platform. ADC's next-generation DS-3 optical transport module is designed for carriers delivering ATM or TDM DS-3 services to remote locations, such as cell sites, campus environments, and remote cabinets or CEVs. Its point-to-point single-fiber architecture helps carriers reduce the cost associated with setting up fiber extensions off a SONET ring or point-to-point circuits over an ATM infrastructure.

D3LX also uses Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology to double a carrier's fiber capacity in a variety of applications. In addition to remote management capabilities, the D3LX is nearly one-third the size of its predecessor, the Soneplex/HiGain DS3FLC, giving carriers almost three times the circuit density in the same rack space.

NetPlane Rolls Out Provisioning Software
NetPlane Systems, the protocol software business of Mindspeed Technologies, announced availability of a distributed Layer 3 Provider Provisioned Virtual Private Network (PP-VPN) software solution. An extension of NetPlane's IP Routing OPTIRoute product family, NetPlane's OPTIRoute PP-VPN provides full integration of Border Gateway Protocol version 4 (BGP4) and Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), enabling OEMs to provide carriers with the capability to deliver mission critical Layer 3 VPN services.

The next evolution of IP-VPNs, PP-VPNs combine extended capabilities of BGP-4, for IP Routing, with MPLS to move the complexity of site-to-site VPN management from the end-user to the service provider network. PP-VPNs also provide support for Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Available now, pricing for OPTIRoute PP-VPN varies depending on options.

Other News

Optical Switch Market Declines 9% in 2002's Q1
According to a recently released Dell'Oro Group report, the Optical Switch Market declined sequentially 9% to $116 million in 2002's first quarter. The report also indicates that the market is expected to decline for the full year 2002, after growing almost 600% in 2001. Tellium was the number one vendor in the quarter, followed by Ciena and Alcatel, Dell'Oro also said.

"The ongoing reduction of telecommunications service provider capital expenditures is putting pressure on the sales of all optical transport technologies," says Shin Umeda, a principal analyst at Dell'Oro Group. "Optical switch equipment is not immune, even though the technology potentially offers significant cost savings to service providers. Looking forward however, we expect new product offerings this year from a number of established suppliers, which is a positive indicator for the long term demand of optical switches."