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PROFILE COMMSCOPE


1990


CommScope is rolled back into General Instrument when the latter is bought by Forstmann, Little and Company.


CommScope begins trading as


an independent company on the New York Stock Exchange


(NYSE: CTV), after its corporate parent splits apart.


1997


2000


Avaya and the premier Systimax brand of structured cabling for local area networks spin out of Lucent Technologies.


CommScope forms a joint venture


partnership with Furukawa Electric of Japan to acquire an interest in Lucent’s fibre-optic cable


business. The resulting venture is named OFS BrightWave.


2001


A technician organises fibre cables inside a fibre optic slice closure


At one end of the network scale, data centres are becoming behemoths, whilst at the other they are becoming far smaller


due to the cost of transmitting bandwidth in the core of the network. To negate the ‘boomerang’ effect of traffic and the cost of backhauling into a central core, what were once local telephone exchanges are now being transformed into micro data centres, thanks to advances in soſtware-defined networking. Within these sites the amount of fibre-optic connectivity, from a density perspective, is substantial. An additional benefit of going down this route is the relatively low latency it provides, an increasingly important consideration within any network. So, at one end of the network scale, data


centres are becoming behemoths, whilst at the other they are becoming far smaller. Both trends require a certain specialism that is well matched to CommScope’s background in terms of sheer density of fibre connectivity. At the micro scale, the emphasis is placed more on the


ability to manage very-high-intensity fibre runs. Whilst an infrastructure where potentially hundreds of cables are run into a very compact space represents a significant challenge, it’s one that CommScope’s focus on research and development is equipped to meet, Sorksy says. ‘We’re not a university, so we don’t undertake


research and development for the sake of it,’ he commented. ‘We base our efforts on customer feedback and we’re finding a considerable amount of traction with telcos, whether mobile or fixed, who are looking to develop these ex-telephone exchanges. What we’re finding is that it’s as new for them as it is for us, and that’s a challenge.’ Sorsky hopes that the R&D efforts made in that space will benefit both mobile operators and those with fixed line networks as they are verging towards the same requirements. Sorsky continued: ‘In terms of where the


industry is on the curve, the rise of hyperscale data centres is possibly further along than the convergence between telephone exchanges and micro data centres, simply due to [the growth of] large corporations like Amazon. As these companies have exponentially expanded, their needs have expanded as well.’ Sorsky feels that the wave of hyperscale data


centres will continue for at least another five years, whereas we have only just begun to scratch the surface with regards to converged data centres. Tis trend is particularly enabled by soſtware-defined networking (SDN) as well


2004


CommScope acquires Avaya’s Connectivity Solutions business with the Systimax brand of structured cabling. Avaya’s Carrier Solutions business also becomes a part of CommScope.


CommScope acquires Andrew Corporation, a manufacturer of wireless hardware since 1937.


2007


2011


CommScope becomes privately owned again when it is acquired by The Carlyle Group, a global asset manager, for $3.9 billion.


CommScope launches its


fibre-to-the-antenna (FTTA) turnkey solution.


2013


2013


Following a $577 million public offering in October 2013, CommScope begins trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange (NASDAQ: COMM).


CommScope holds the first public demonstration of 100 Gigabit Ethernet applications using short-wavelength-division


multiplexing (SWDM) over wideband multimode fibre (WBMMF).


2015


2015


CommScope acquires TE Connectivity’s telecom, enterprise and wireless businesses in a deal valued at $3 billion.


Issue 14 • Winter 2017 FIBRE SYSTEMS 15


CommScope


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