Corning Scores Nortel Supply Contract

The telecom segment of Corning Inc., Advanced Materials (Corning, NY) is in the news again, this time with a contract to supply Nortel Networks (Brampton, Ontario)with erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) modules to incorporate into Nortel's soon-to-be-released long-haul optical-amplification system. The family of Corning-designed optical amplifier modules will allow network operators to incrementally expand the capacity of the system from 10 channels up to 160 channels (1.6 Tb/s), each operating at 10 Gb/s. According to Nortel, the OPTera 1600G system will provide five times the maximum per-fiber capacity of current systems.

The EDFA modules operate in both the conventional (C-band) 1550 nm-transmission window, and the neighboring long or L-band (1570-1605nm) window. They provide high-output power; are engineered for flattened gain across wide bandwidths, and have a mid-stage access design to accommodate dispersion compensation, wavelength add-drop and other devices vital for DWDM operation.

Corning previously supplied the optical amplifier modules for Nortel Networks' first commercially available line of amplifiers designed for the 10 Gb/s transmission market.