Technical Insight
More New Companies Join the Ranks of Fiber-Optic Component Manufacturers (Fiber Optics News)
Qusion Technologies Opens 33,000 Sq.Ft. Manufacturing Facility Qusion Technologies, a telecom component manufacturer founded in late 1999, has opened a 33,000 sq.ft. facility in South Brunswick, NJ. The new facility will enable the company to realize its long term aim of manufacturing complete telecommunications modules by monolithically integrating optical components, including lasers, modulators and detectors, onto a single chip. "Qusion s mission is the full integration of all optical components for modules operating at 40 Gb/s and higher, although initially we will be manufacturing modulators and optical switches," says CEO Fred Rappaport. "We expect to demonstrate the first fully integrated transceiver modules by the end of 2001." The company s new production facility includes a 4,000 sq.ft. class 1000 clean room, in addition to a class 100 clean room space for photolithography. Expected to house 50 employees by the end of 2001, the South Brunswick facility will be equipped with an MOCVD reactor system, and the first InP and InGaAs devices are expected by mid-2001. "We believe that separate parts of the industry for optical components and electronic components will not exist in future," added Igor Trofimov, chief technology officer. "If photonic integration using InP is successful, the telecom industry will merge both parts into a single branch of the industry." T-Networks Receives $29M in First Round Financing T-Networks (Allentown, PA), a company founded in July 2000 to develop and manufacture 40 Gb/s transceiver modules, has raised $29 million in its first round of funding. The company will manufacture components and subsystems at its vertically integrated facility, which is currently undergoing an expansion to add 48,000 sq.ft. of space to the existing 6,000 sq.ft. building. "Our goal is to make a telecom transmitter containing lasers, photodetectors, ICs and packaging, in a user-friendly interface for operation at 40 Gb/s and higher," said CTO and co-founder Aaron Bond. "To do this we re bringing together expertise and experience in several key areasepitaxial growth, design and fabrication of high speed RFICs and RF photonic chips, and high volume packaging of optoelectronics devices." Optillion Receives Second-Round Investment of $53M Optillion, a fiber-optics transceiver company based in Stockholm, Sweden, has received $53 million in a second round of equity financing. Founded in December 1999, the company says its first products will be transceivers for 10 Gigabit Ethernet data communications. Optillion expects the financial injection to enable it to accelerate transceiver development, build a manufacturing plant and open US offices. Slated to be on-line in mid-2001, the new manufacturing operation in Stockholm will be used to manufacture chips and package transceivers. Kamelian Receives $20M Development Boost Kamelian, a developer and manufacturer of fiber-optic components and modules based in Glasgow, UK, has received $20M to finance a major expansion program. The company plans to build a dedicated manufacturing facility near Oxford, UK, and will also expand its Glasgow R&D facilities. Kamelian specializes in the design and fabrication of integrated optical chips, and low volume prototype manufacturing is currently being performed by an optoelectronics foundry located at the same site. The first products are expected during 2001. "Kamelian s powerful technology platform combines its expertise in designing and manufacturing active optical components that have optical switching and amplification capabilities, with key know-how in the hybrid integration of these active [chips] with [passive devices] that perform static wavelength routing functions," said CEO Paul May. "This combination provides us with a range of products that perform such dynamic optical functions as switching, wavelength conversion and signal regeneration."
