fibeReality In The News

Articles, Presentations, & Disputations

November 25, 2020

FiBRE SYSTEMS

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

June 11, 2020

According to New Report by fibeReality, LLC, Ciena at Critical Inflection Point

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…

March 7, 2019

BASe OFC

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.

March 5, 2019

2019 OFC Rump Session

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…

March 5, 2019

OFC 2019 Special Chairs’ Session

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…

March 5, 2019

OFC 2019 Media/Analyst Luncheon

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…

March 4, 2019

OFC 2019 Open Platform Summit

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…

February 8, 2019

2019 Photonics West Industry Perspective

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,…

February 5, 2019

“Embracing Uncertainty” Executive Panel

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…

July 19, 2018

NG-PON2: The Case for 5G Trumps Lackluster Equipment Volumes

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…

March 11, 2018

2018 OIDA Executive Forum

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…

September 17, 2017

Being Provocative with a Project Lead of “Metro-Haul”

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…

September 17, 2017

Challenging Ericsson on Synergies at ECOC 2017

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…

September 14, 2017

Paradoxical Illustration at Special Pre-ECOC 2017 Symposium in Denmark

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…

May 18, 2017

Comment In the Matter of Restoring Internet Freedom

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…

March 20, 2017

OIDA Executive Forum 2017

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.

February 20, 2017

HOW TO CHOOSE QSFP28 OPTICS FOR 100GBE DEPLOYMENT

“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.”

February 4, 2017

Ciena Became a Nortel Optical Transport Company, Part 2

“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.”

December 21, 2016

AT&T, Ciena, Fujitsu Test Open ROADM

“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…

September 19, 2016

Market Focus Session at ECOC 2016

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.

September 12, 2016

Maynard firm cashes in on internet infrastructure boom

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…

March 3, 2016

Can money be made with SDN?

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

August 21, 2015

100G Replacing 10G Optical Transport in Metropolitan Networks

“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…

August 12, 2015

Silicon photonics: “The excitement has gone”

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.”    

March 23, 2015

2015 Executive Forum

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