Finisar Australia leads global ROADM market

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 22 July 2010 19:07

IT Industry - Market

Reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexors (ROADMs) are a key component of the world's optical fibre networks. Sydney based Finisar Australia is a world leader in this rapidly growing market, and it is looking for people.

Finisar Australia is now a subsidiary of California based Finisar, which claims to be the world's largest supplier of optical communications equipment - optical transceivers and ROADMs.

Finisar Australia was founded in 2001 by Dr Simone Poole and Steve Frisken as Engana Pty Ltd. Engana was acquired by Optium in 2006, which was in turn acquired by Finisar in 2008. Poole and Frisken however still play key roles in Finisar Australia and the company today is solely focussed on products that evolved from Engana's technology

Finisar Australia produces wavelength selective switches (WSS), devices that are able to switch wavelengths from one fibre to another, in any combination, across a confluence of up to ten separate fibres. This facility is important for network operators as they need to be able to reconfigure their networks to meet changing demand patterns.

However a key differentiator of the WSS technology developed by Finisar is its flexibility. Most optical systems today use 10Gbps per wavelength channels, but wider channels carrying 40Gbps are well established and 100Gbps and even 400Gbps channels are on the way. The Finisar technology is unique in that it is able to switch these wider, higher bandwidth channels simply by upgrading the software.

According to Finisar CEO, Eitan Gertel, the ROADM market is growing at an unprecedented rate. "People did not prophecy the ROADM market to be as big as it is…It is growing at about 30 or 40 percent per year. Every system deployed today has a lot of ROADMs in it because operators want to have a lot of flexibility."

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