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INTERVIEW: ENTREPRENEURSHIP


‘I resigned and swore to myself that I’d be my own boss’


Carlos Lee, EPIC’s director general, talks to Philippe Bolle, CEO of Skylane Optics, provider of transceivers for optical communication


What led to you setting up Skylane Optics? In 1988 I graduated from Union Gramme University, Belgium, with a degree in industrial engineering. After some postgraduate research on laser missile guidance systems for military applications, in 1990 I started working as a development engineer for a small family company working in the diamond and textile industries. At that time, the company


was using out-of-date technology and in a bad financial shape, and I was promised some shares if I could help turn the company around. After two years working hard to develop a solid-state semiconductor laser printer for textiles, the company began making a profit, but the owner refused to sell me a part of the company. The next day, I resigned and swore to myself that from then on, I’d be my own boss. So, in 1992, at the age of 26, I


approached Optilas, a French- owned distributor of photonics products, and offered to open an office in Belgium with me as co-founder and with a 10 per cent share in the business. By 1998, the company


had grown to a workforce of 22 and was doing well, but unfortunately, due to the death of the group’s CEO, the owners sold out to a US distributor.


www.electrooptics.com | @electrooptics


Not wanting to be a cog in a corporate machine, in 1998, I cashed in my shares and began a fruitful partnership with Laser2000 as a majority shareholder. At that time, there was a lot of work in telecoms. I went to the US and got a contract to represent Finisar in Europe, and opened offices in Milan and Stockholm working as a distributor of optical components and transceivers, supplying most of the big tier one companies like Ericsson and Nokia. In the early 2000s, as a


result of the telecom crash, the telecom market suddenly collapsed, and all the big players in Europe shut down their factories and moved everything to contract manufacturing in Asia. The only way for me to stay


alive was to go after the optic fibre for the home market, and as Scandinavia was the only place pushing home-access fibre, I opened an office in Stockholm to supply fibre and transceivers to the Nordic market.


Skylane Optics In 2006 I was approached by Tele2, a Swedish company fed up with paying a high price for optical transceivers, as they were required to buy a specific optical transceiver for each of the six platforms they worked with.


They asked me if I could


supply third-party hybrid optical transceivers, and after investigating the feasibility and market potential for this type of device, in 2008 I set up Skylane Optics to make my own optical transceivers. At that time, because


there was no telecom optics manufacturing in Europe, the only solution was to contract manufacture in China, but the quality was bad, and I had to spend a lot of time teaching


“If you go to a bank in Belgium and ask for €4m to launch a company, you’ll be lucky to get €400,000, whereas asking for $10m in the US is seen as pocket money”


them how to improve and optimise the technology. The problem, which has been with me all my life, was that the knowledge and technical know- how I gave them was being shared with my competitors, and in effect, I was teaching the Chinese how to improve their market.


How has Skylane Optics developed?


Since 2008 Skylane Optics has been a third-party manufacturer dedicated to telecom operators, providing optical and copper transceivers, active optical


and direct attach cables, Mux/ Demux and coding boxes. We’ve grown to a workforce of around 50, and now have offices in Belgium, Brazil, Sweden and USA and cover the European, South American and US markets.


In 2010, I set up my own


ESD-protected cleanroom in Belgium, for R&D, and also to ensure that everything we sell was top quality and fully compliant with MSA, ITU-T and IEEE standards. In 2011, I set up Skylane Optics in Brazil, because at that time, to sell in Brazil you had to produce in Brazil. But three years later, due to increasing labour costs, we closed down production but kept the cleanroom and warehouse. We then started to focus on South and Central America, and opened sales offices in Mexico and Colombia. This was followed two years ago with the opening of an office in Miami, when we finally achieved our main goal of selling in the United States.


What have been the main challenges? Lack of talent: one of the main challenges for photonics companies in Belgium, and in fact, all Europe, is the difficulty in recruiting photonics engineers.


Belgium only produces around 20 graduates in


March 2021 Electro Optics 45 g


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