Alcatel to Triple Fiber Production Capacity

DALLAS, June 20 -- Alcatel plans to triple its fiber optics production volume by 2002, the company said. Alcatel anticipates the demand for solutions in the fiber market to grow by more than 30 percent this year, and keep on growing for the next few years, especially in the metropolitan and access markets.
We have made the strategic decision not only to grow the business to meet today's demand, but to proactively meet our customers' demand in the future, said Jacques Blanc, president of Alcatel fiber optics. The expansion will also enhance our ability to rapidly introduce new and innovative products to the market.
Alcatel has installed its long-distance cables with TeraLight fibers to handle dense wavelength division multiplexing. TeraLight furnishes more than 240 user channels in the C, L and S bands, which is 2.4 Tb/s for each fiber with a 10-Gb system.
Alcatel fiber optics owns six plants worldwide. The expansions are set for production plants in Europe and in Claremont, N.C.