fibeReality In The News

In Houston Chronicle

Competitive analysis on Avicena’s new solution for the Fibre Yearbook 2022.

fibeReality, LLC announced in a newly published study that recent, corporate-wide reorganization efforts by Lumentum looks like an admission of the company’s inability and/or unwillingness to efficiently run its internal factories and fabs

Our questions at the event

Our evaluation and interaction at OFC 2021

Our attempts to wake up the audience at the OFC session were in vain.

We pressed a BT executive on Infinera’s XR Optics solution at the OFC event.

We asked about a shift to analog.

At the OFC workshop, we asked an exec at Broadcom how the supplier expected to generate adequate margins on silicon photonics.

Mark Lutkowitz on future 400ZR pricing, its impact on certain key vendors and the outlook for 400ZR+ and 800ZR

fibeReality, LLC announced in a newly published study that the 5G strategy of Verizon Wireless and other mobile network operators is simply about ensuring their sheer survival because of the intense concern of running out of adequate capacity in general, based on the burgeoning data requirements of their current and…

fibeReality, LLC announced in a newly published study that the world’s leading optical system vendor in the world, Ciena, is facing a huge challenge in the restructuring of a hefty portion of its business. Ciena’s Clash with Cannibalization at Webscale Operators says the supplier’s initial, near-term obstacle right now seems to be…

Mark presented “Emergence of Data Center Operators in Submarine Networks.”

Mark makes a presentation on “Israeli & European Optical Supplier Combination Opportunities.”

At the event, we did not get an adequate answer to our question as to whether Verizon can stay indefinitely with a centralized approach for 5G fronthaul, especially for network protection purposes.

Mark was the moderator on a panel at OFC 2019.

Mark sounded off that before the industry discusses integration, as the only option that needs to be taken into consideration to boost capacity, that simply deploying new fiber, such as happening with 5G (and should also be allowed to occur on the US coastlines in a big way with festoon…

fibeReality “knew that [the] Partner Director Network Architecture, Microsoft Azure Networking was not exactly a fan of the use of MultiMode Fiber (MMF) combined with VCSELs for applications that are 30 meters long or less — for what we felt was an irrational prejudice. When we asked him about it…we were…

fibeReality “brought up to Cisco Systems’ Vice President/GM Optical Systems and Optics Group that many people in the industry were scratching their heads about the Luxtera purchase, pointed out that there had been practically no public comments on silicon photonics technology by him over the last few years (other than…

At the “Will Disaggregation Drive Core Network Deployments in 2025?” session, “fibeReality could not resist responding that in looking at an out-year like 2025, at a show like OFC…by itself, reveals a large amount of pessimism — and we also took on AT&T again in expressing our disbelief about it…

At the “Silicon Photonics and Photonic Integrated Circuits” meeting, the discussion was definitely skewed toward the former. Mark responded to the speakers that the 50th anniversary of the silicon photonics concept will be celebrated later in the year. He then asked: Despite the limited number of existing applications for SiPh,…

At SPIE Photonics West, the speakers were asked: “Which market segments do you consider to offer the most potential for growth in 2019 and why?” Interestingly, Lumentum’s CSO did not mention 400G. When we inquired about it during Q&A, LeMaitre provided a fairly decent response (at least from the company’s…

Noted Mark Lutkowitz, principal at independent consulting and market research firm fibeReality: “We fully anticipate that Verizon will make the necessary huge investments off-budget to ensure that the optics food chain from the lowest level components, such as chips and transceivers, to the full systems are in place in order…

Mark presented a keynote address: “A ‘Contrarian’ Market Analysis of Singlemode & Multimode Solutions” in Kessel-Lo, Belgium

On the US-China trade conflict.

Rockley Photonics’ revelation to us. 

There was one matter we brought up that nobody wanted to address.

Mark debated that “build it and they will come” can be a dangerous strategy as well as why the biggest hurdle to autonomous driving is out of the hands of the telecom suppliers.

We asked the financial analyst if he is concerned about longer-term margins on 3D-sensors, given Finisar’s entrance in a big way.

At the Special CEO Fireside Chat, we asked the panel the key question — whether the major hyperscale operators are responsible for some of the changes that we are seeing (Lumentum’s Oclaro acquisition, Finisar’s out-of-the-box CEO selection, quick movement toward diversification, etc.) with increasingly driving down prices to unprofitable levels…

During the last session, we provided a reason for optimism in the long term. 

Mark “asked him whether it could be argued that it was overkill to have six work packages and 10 use cases with Metro-Haul, when the bulk of the action is taking place in the access. His response was that the problem is huge, and it needs to be taken in…

The Market Focus session on synergies between optical and mobile plant for 5G networks by Ericsson “were superficial in nature. There was nothing about having the Calix boxes being at the heart of the networks, instead of just at the end point, such as in using the OLTs as the…

The Deputy Chair of Photonics 21 Working Group 1 “did not see the paradox of Europe being very R&D intensive with lots of funding through public-private partnerships, and the fact that the payoff is not long enough or sustainable until the industry moves on to the next technology (including in…

AT&T officials, scholars, and others, surprised at this conclusion of the DC Circuit and the FCC, noted that ISPs that filter the Internet have an incentive to avoid burdensome and costly Title II obligations. “Why would not some ISPs consider moving in this direction [curating online content] to avoid the FCC’s…

Alka presented: “Future of VCSELs in Data Centers — Healthy Market Indefinitely”

Mark is having a very frank discussion with an executive from Go!Foton.  

At the microphone, Mark confronted the Engineering Director of Google Access directly against his stance on NG-PON2, and stated that given his company only deployed a paltry amount of fiber to the home, and with Verizon having a vast amount of experience, his dismissal of the approach was disingenuous.

During the Q&A, Mark heavily criticized the whole notion of AIM Photonics, emphasizing the poor track record of public-private partnerships.

Despite Mark’s arguments during the session that a monolithic approach deserves to be called silicon photonics more than one that is a hybrid, there were at least a few people in the room who seemed to indicate that SiPh can mean just about anything — of course, then it means…

“According to the fibeReality (consulting and market research firm specializing in the telecommunications and data communications optical industry), the price of 100G QSFP PSM4 and CWDM4 will drop to a historic low.”

“We believe that historically, [Ciena] has had a penchant for readily transitioning to the strategies and philosophies of executives, particularly brought on through acquisitions, including from startups that were already on a severe downward trajectory, which had at times resulted in serious financial consequences.”

“There is not much evidence to suggest that AT&T has become in reality substantially less operationally driven based on the old Ma Bell model, which has always advocated keeping elements in the network indefinitely,” Lutkowitz added. “In contrast, again, it is Verizon, despite its conservative stance on OLS, which has…

One of the most pressing matters in the industry are the implications of signalling protocol PAM- 4 overtaking incumbent NRZ.

“Much of what I have written below is a synthesis of blog posts that are published by…. consultants, including “fibeReality….”

During Q&A after the session, Mark asked executives from Finisar and Lumentum Holdings how they expect to remain in business with all of the negative market factors.

Mark questioning Hans-Juergen Schmidtke, Director of Engineering in Facebook’s Infrastructure Foundation team after his presentaion.

During the Q&A, after Mark asked a knowledgeable source about what Intel was actually shipping in terms of silicon photonics, the extraordinary response was that it was a secret.

Lutkowitz said it would be a mistake to overvalue Acacia based on its strong stock performance, which puts Acacia’s market cap at $4 billion, around 10 times its revenue….There’s a bit of a mini-stock bubble in the optics industry that Acacia is part of, he said, and the company went…

“There’s been a bunch of skepticism of late about the efforts of Infinera, which has traditionally sold to the ‘long-haul’ fiber market, to get into the short-haul, or ‘metro’ market.”

Several recent online articles have pointed to a lack of enthusiasm on the part of network operators for deployment of SDN….

“Mark Lutkowitz, an industry analyst who has been a steward of observing telecom trends suggests that the expected migration from 10G to 100G during 2015 may be delayed with the availability of 40G technology. It should be noted that 100G technology is more difficult to deploy than either the popular…

Mark Lutkowitz, principal at consultancy fibeReality, is more circumspect. “As a general rule, the more that reality sets in, the less impressive silicon photonics gets to be,” he says. “The physics is just hard; light is not naturally inclined to work on the silicon the way electronics does.”    

Mark moderated the panel facing the participants from the audience to better engage the speakers in a lively discussion and debate.

Mark was a speaker at the event and he emphasized: “Game Will Never Be Over for Optical Gear.”

Mark questioned the keynote presenter from Microsoft starting with density and ending with security (Part 2 19:30-25:40).