OFC 2004 News Briefs

OFS, a maker of fiber optic products, announced at OFC 2004 that MCI has made the first North American purchase of its medium dispersion TrueWave Reach fiber. OFS said it will supply a custom strain-free cable design to help ensure long-term reliability. Based in Norcross, Ga., OFS has facilities in Avon, Conn.; Carrollton, Ga.; Somerset, N.J.; and Sturbridge, Mass., as well as in Denmark, Germany and Russia. . . . BroadLight Inc., an Israel-based supplier of communication semiconductors and optical transceivers for fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) passive optical networks (PONS), announced it has been issued US patent 6,686,799, "Burst Mode Limiter-Amplifier," relating to burst traffic transport over PONs. The patent's inventor, Raanan Ivry, BroadLight's founder and vice president/analog design, said one of the barriers to BPON (broadband passive optical networks) implementation is receiving burst mode data from a different optical network terminal. He said BroadLight overcame this barrier by offering an integrated solution comprised of a BPON OLT (optical line terminal) transceiver and controller. BroadLight's current BPON OLT transceiver uses the patent technology.