Nyquist Capital » TLAB

Broadcom Enters FTTH Chipset Market

Andrew Schmitt — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:07:00 +0000

Broadcom is entering the PON chip market and has secured design wins with a major tier-1 equipment vendor. While this is something predicted here, the timetable was sooner than expected. This will have a substantial impact on FTTH component and equipment suppliers as well as the carrier currently conducting lab trials with the device.

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Adtran Q108

Andrew Schmitt — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:30:53 +0000

Adtran reported surprisingly good numbers and made specific comments that indicate the Great North American capex freeze of 2007 is thawing in a few areas. The company also had interesting things to say relative to access market growth and trends in the Enterprise portion of their business.

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FTTH Silicon Market Share

Andrew Schmitt — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:46:16 +0000

The latest Linley Group report on Networking Silicon Market Share provides a breakout of PON FTTH silicon market share for the second year running.. It includes both market size and market share information for all Networking markets, including PON. The key takeaway is that Linley believes the market grew only 20% in dollar size, though I estimate deployments grew worldwide over 50% year over year. Such is life as a semiconductor vendor.

They shared the following data with me.

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State of the Photon - Global FTTH Activity

Andrew Schmitt — Thu, 31 May 2007 21:56:39 +0000

I haven’t been shy about my prediction that GE-PON would trump GPON deployments and so far I’ve been right. The dominance of GE-PON continues, with large deployments planned or underway throughout Asia. Verizon (VZ) is the only carrier deploying BPON/GPON in size though some activity is promised in Europe. We shall see.

Let’s take a quick look at the state of the photon.

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Squirrels Ate My FiOS

Andrew Schmitt — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:47:27 +0000

It’s not just a catchy title. I lost my FiOS connectivity Saturday morning, rendering my Verizon tripe-play package of voice, data, and television inoperative. The culprit? Squirrels. (more…)

GPON Interoperability Smokescreen

Andrew Schmitt — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 11:00:22 +0000

FSAN has completed their first GPON interoperability testing. Interoperability of GPON systems is important, since the ITU standard ultimately should yield systems that interface more smoothly than the loosely defined GE-PON specification.

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Verizon GPON Selection

Andrew Schmitt — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:00:47 +0000

From Telephony Online:

In a research note issued this morning, UBS analyst Nikos Theodosopoulos said Verizon (VZ) is likely to pick Alcatel (ALA), Motorola (MOT) and Tellabs (TLAB) as its GPON suppliers in a twist on the carrier’s traditional dual-sourcing practices.

Typically the Bells would select two vendors, with a 70:30 deployment split between the two over the life of the contract. Who got the 70 was usually determined by technology and pricing in the early stages of the contract, establishing relative incumbency for one supplier.
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The Future of FTTH in China - Part II

Andrew Schmitt — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:09:09 +0000

This is part II in a continuing series. Part I can be found here.

Technology Selection â€“ GE-PON vs. G-PON

Chinese carriers will be forced to select between two competing standards for Passive Optical Networks (PON) for Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Deployments.

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AMCC demonstrates GPON MAC

Andrew Schmitt — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 00:18:43 +0000

AMCC (AMCC) demonstrated a GPON chipset in a Xilinx FPGA at OFC in Anaheim. No announcement (that I saw) was made, and no press was in Lightreading.
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FiOS FTTH Install (w/Photos)

Andrew Schmitt — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 15:24:31 +0000

I had the Verizon FiOS 15Mb/s FTTH service installed at my home in September. These are my notes from conversations with the techs. If anything here is inaccurate, or you have more interesting data to add, please make a comment.

My home was originally built in 1925 and was undergoing extensive renovations, including landscaping, and as a result the entire front yard was dirt. My copper POTS service and Comcast cable were connected aerially to my home (ugly) and I figured this would be an excellent time to bury the connections in the front yard.

The copper from the pole to my home was still original. I still find it remarkable that the infrastructure installed in 1930 (manually switched phone service) could support nearly 1Mb/s DSL. I wonder if the fiber that Verizon installed will still be in use 75 years from today.
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Motorola and Broadlight

Andrew Schmitt — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 23:10:37 +0000

This news caught us by surprise. Motorola has invested in Broadlight, a supplier of silicon for GPON equipment. Our analysis of the GPON market (in conjunction with an extensive look at Passave) reached the following conclusions.

Tellabs - Broadlight
Optical Solutions (Now Calix) - In House
Alcatel - Freescale
Motorola (Quantum Bridge) - BPON in house, hiring an ASIC team for GPON
Hitachi - Unknown

Unclear what this means to the ASIC team in Andover, MA and in PA.

Regardless, we remain very negative on GPON as an opportunity for silicon PON MAC vendors and negative on GPON as a widely adopted technology over the next several years.