Teraburst claims first contract

Less than a month after emerging from stealth mode, optical switch-maker Teraburst today announced its first contract—an OEM agreement to switch and manage back-haul traffic for Synergy Telecommunications Corp. (Syntelco), a reseller of last-mile broadband solutions that use free-space optics technology.

Under the terms of the agreement, McLean, Va.-based Syntelco will resell Teraburst’s two optical core switches—one with 640 GB/s capacity, the other with 200 GB/s capacity—as Syntelco tries to make its systems more flexible and reliable, according to Tom Myers, Teraburst’s founder and chief operating officer.

“We will allow them to form metro rings and meshes,” Myers said. “Right now, their network is point-to-point, so they don’t need switches.”

The companies have been working together for some time and demonstrated interoperability during Supercomm 2001 in Atlanta last month, Myers said.

“As you move closer to the edge, [Teraburst’s offering is] a scaleable product…that allows it to move to the edge,” said Syntelco CEO Chuck Woods. “[Combined with] the competitive advantages we have with laser-transmission systems—principally, quickness of deployment and [low cost], but really the more important issue is there’s no FCC licensing required to make that link—we can provide interesting bandwidth connectivity, today up to 1.25 GB, on the edge in quick deployments.”

Although Teraburst believes the bulk of its business will come from selling its core switches directly to carriers, working with the value-added reseller provides several opportunities for the start-up, Myers said. In particular, the Syntelco deal will let the switch maker test its management and support systems while pursuing carrier customers.

“It’s really significant to us, because, right now, we’re working to build a customer base,” Myers said. “The uniqueness in this deal is that we will have full management control of the optical system. … We’ll be able to show that we can manage an optical network.”

Built on a gallium arsenide chip, Teraburst’s switches will utilize a patent-pending millimeter wavelength technology that is designed to provide the speed and simplicity of an all-optical switch with the intelligence of an optical-electrical-optical (OEO) switch. The passive architecture in the switch means Teraburst can handle traffic at speeds up to 40 GB/s without decreasing port density.

Teraburst is completing lab trials of its 64x64 switch and plans to begin field trials with carriers soon, he said. The products are expected to be generally available at the end of the year. The agreement with Syntelco was reached despite the fact that Teraburst does not yet have a product.

“I guess you have to be a believer sometimes,” Woods said. “You could get the throughput of a photonic system along with the properties of an electrical system in one box … it just makes sense.”