OFC Briefs

High-tech guru George Gilder told a gathering at a dinner hosted by Altamar Networks that the so-called glut of bandwidth reminded him of the situation in the 1980s where folks were saying much the same about the semiconductor industry. Those firms in the semiconductor industry that stayed the course and worked on expanding enabling technologies and applications not only survived the downturn but went onto prosper, Guilder added.
Tatsuo Izawa, president and CEO of NTT Electronics Corp., was awarded the John Tyndall Award at OFC's Plenary session. Izawa was honored for contributions to vapor phase deposition for optical fiber fabrication and pioneering work on silica-based lightwave circuits
In his keynote speech Robert Lucky, of Telcordia Technologies, said that while these might be difficult times for the industry, the market was not solely to blame. According to Lucky, "We're experiencing once-in-a-century changes. Technology is undermining some fundamental models in telecom."