Wednesday, October 03, 2007

About the optical world

A bit of shift to the optical technologies in my blog today, with LightReading's Optical Expo going on in Dallas. One interesting thing that strikes me is that today optical stocks are soaring, both Ciena (CIEN) and Infinera (INFN) have > 5% gains with no extraordinary news from either company. May be Optical Expo is delivering a strong message which is going unnoticed. Any coments?

From news reports, 100 Gig technologies are getting quite some attention, with AT&T, Verizon both complaining that the standards may not be ready fast enough. Interesting to note that they have been observing / are anticipating tremendous bandwidth flow in their pipes. There has been much talk about how much bandwidth demand video can hog. Certainly there is extraordinary promise. Netflix is already hosting video and provides download services.

I think more than anything else, it depends on how the access world picks up. Give people optical fiber to their home, give them a 1Gbps bandwidth pipe, and see how much video and bandwidth they will use. The potential is extraordinary.

So my appeal to AT&T, Verizon and the likes. Focus on access. Get all PON technologies rolling fast. Invest your money in digging those trenches to the apartments and homes and you will be extraordinarily rewarded.

By the way, this blog has had double views over the last two days. Is it just me dreaming about the success of Optical Expo?