VDSL2 and Ikanos
Ikanos Communications went public today. Nothing spectacular, but their stock closed up a dollar on the first day of trading. Ikanos is interesting because they are the market leader in producing chips that support the new VDSL2 technology. VDSL2 promises to deliver very high bandwidth over very short copper loops. (But be careful. It runs out of gas compared with. ADSL2+ past (insert a speculative VDSL2 loop length here); my estimate is only 6Kft or so.
This article by Dean Takahashi in the San Jose Mercury News provides useful background:
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“Chip makers such as Germany’s Infineon, Texas Instruments, Conexant Systems and Broadcom plan to challenge Ikanos, as do smaller players such as Metalink and Centillium Communications. Japan, Germany and France are in the adoption stage now. But the VDSL chip makers have to wait for the phone companies to mobilize in the United States.”
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“We are seeing the interest growing in all markets worldwide,” said Imran Hajimusa, senior director of marketing at Infineon in San Jose. “But overall, it’s a tough market because there are a lot of competitors.”
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In-Stat believes the [VDSL2] market will grow to between 40 million and 60 million in 2009. That means the market will grow from around $100 million in 2004 to a multibillion-dollar business.
[via SiliconValley.com]