NEWS ANALYSIS
The rise and rise of Infinera
Infinera is storming long-haul fibre optic markets with its InP-based platform.
IN 2005, Infinera lit up the long-haul fibre optic telecoms market with the release of a wavelength division multiplexing platform, the DTN.
Based on the company’s in-house InP photonics integrated circuits (PICs), the platform catapulted the then start-up to number one in the 10G North American market. Eight years later, history has repeated itself.
Watching demand for bandwidth rise at exponential rates, Infinera has spent the intervening years honing its DTN-X platform for 100G networks while competitors built 40G platforms before moving onto 100G. The platform was delivered in 2012, and today the company has seized around 35 percent of 100G market.
As Geoff Bennett, Director of Solutions and Technology at Infinera, puts it: “We’ve moved straight into the number one position in the 100G market. Eighteen months ago Ciena had 95 percent market share here and now they have less than 10 percent.” And with analysts across the board forecasting continued strong growth for 100G – Infonetics predicts coherent 100G shipments to double this year, and then again in 2014 – the future looks bright for Infinera. Carriers, from New Zealand-based FX Networks to PacNet, Hong Kong, are snapping up the company’s 100G platform to build
Right: After years of heavy investment, Infinera’s InP chip development is paying off
networks delivering 10, 20 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet services. And Infinera’s finances reflect this.
“Our [North American] competitors, Ciena, Alcatel and Nokia Siemens Networks, are massively encumbered by debt,” says Bennett. “We have something like $300 million in the bank, we are a gnats whisker away from making money in the last quarter, and expect to move into profitability later this year. We’re certainly optimistic about the rest of the year.”
So what is Infinera doing that the rest of the pack isn’t? Bennett firstly attributes the company’s rising revenue to its sales of DTN-X. The platform features 500 Gb/s PICs, which integrate more than 600 optical functions onto a pair of chips, and built-in optical transport network (OTN) switching.
“Our product does not address the 100G marketplace with 100G transponders, as everyone else does. We are the only company shipping 500G super-channel line cards. And we are the only company that includes full non- blocking OTN
[optical transport
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www.compoundsemiconductor.net August / September 2013
network] switching in every node,” he says.
Indeed, competitors are currently delivering 100G line cards and while OTN switching – crucial to eliminating stranded
capacity and optimising
network routing
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