Compass-EOS raises $42M

Compass-EOS has raised $42 million in investment. The Israeli start-up launched its r10004 IP core router in March and has so far announced two customers: NTT Communications and the China Education and Research Network, CERNET. The company says it has a second tier-one operator yet to be announced.

Asaf Somekh with the icPhotonics chip

"Both global operators have purchased routers on several occasions for several types of deployments," says Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing at Compass-EOS. “There are also a couple more smaller operators that we cannot disclose at this stage." The company is  involved in several trials in the US, Japan and EMEA.

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Verizon on 100G+ optical transmission developments

Source: Gazettabyte

Feature: 100 Gig and Beyond. Part 1:

Verizon's Glenn Wellbrock discusses 100 Gig deployments and higher speed optical channel developments for long haul and metro. 

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Books in 2013 - Part 1

Gazettabyte is asking various industry figures to highlight books they have read this year and recommend, both work-related and more general titles.

Part 1:

Tiejun J. Xia (TJ), Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Verizon

The work-related title is Optical Fiber Telecommunications, Sixth Edition, by Ivan Kaminow, Tingye Li and Alan E. Willner. This edition, published in 2013, includes almost all the latest development results of optical fibre communications.

My non-work-related book is Fortune: Secrets of Greatness by the editors of Fortune Magazine. While published in 2006, the book still sheds light on the 'secrets' of people with significant accomplishments.

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Reporting the optical component & module industry

LightCounting recently published its six-monthly optical market research covering telecom and datacom. Gazettabyte interviewed Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting, about the findings.

When people forecast they always make a mistake on the timeline because they overestimate the impact of new technology in the short term and underestimate in the long term.

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Optical networking spending up in all regions except Europe

A new cycle of investment in optical networking in taking place in all regions except Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), says market research company, Ovum. Market growth is being led by North America, while spending is also up in Asia Pacific (APAC) and South and Central America (S&C America). But EMEA will again be down in 2013.

Source data: Ovum

Ovum forecasts that the global optical networking market will grow to US $17.5 billion by 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 3.1 percent.

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The connected vehicle - driving in the cloud

Cars are already more silicon than steel. As makers add LTE high speed broadband, they are destined to become more app than automobile. The possibilities that come with connecting your car to the cloud are scintillating. No wonder Gil Golan, director at General Motors' Advanced Technical Center in Israel, says the automotive industry is at an 'inflection point'.

"If you put LTE to the vehicle ... you are going to open a very wide pipe and you can send to the cloud and get results with almost no latency"

Gil Golan, General Motors

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The CDFP 400 Gig module

• The CDFP will be a 400 Gig short reach module
• Module will enable 4 Terabit line cards 
• Specification will be completed in the next year

A CDFP pluggable multi-source agreement (MSA) has been created to develop a 400 Gigabit module for use in the data centre. "It is a pluggable interface, very similar to the QSFP and CXP [modules]," says Scott Sommers, group product manager at Molex, one of the CDFP MSA members.

Scott Sommers, MolexThe CDFP name stands for 400 (CD in Roman numerals) Form factor Pluggable. The MSA will define the module's mechanical properties and its medium dependent interface (MDI) linking the module to the physical medium. The CDFP will support passive and active copper cable, active optical cable and multi-mode fibre.

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