Yang Zhaohua, FiberHome Technologies’ VP of global marketing and chief expert of optical network solution, R&D, explains how the company is planning to leverage its research DNA in optical-fiber networking to expand into emerging markets
Telecom Asia:What are telcos looking for nowadays and how is FiberHome delivering that?
Yang Zhaohua: Telcos are looking for solutions that can help them meet the end-users’ requirements for high-speed broadband, IPTV, rich content, 3G, LTE and video services. It's a challenge for telcos because bandwidth demand is huge.
FiberHome’s major business is to provide telcos with fiber solutions that can be applied at Layer 1, 2 and 3, covering fiber cable, access, transmission and optical backbone.
This is kind of like building a road. I do understand that it’s a hard choice for telcos – if you built a road, everyone will drive a large truck but you [the operator] cannot benefit from it.
But if there is no road, there is no business at all. Our major task is to provide operators with certain kinds of ways to build this road -- how to build the road, how to build it as wide as possible, how to be more flexible for all kinds of service carriage.
We offer a total solution for telcos, from access to backbone. For example, our FTTx GPON solution has been deployed in the backbone layer of Telekom Malaysia’s network.
We understand that when our customers build the network, they are looking for turnkey solutions, not just at unit price and ODM product. If we can provide a comprehensive solution, not just access equipment like FTTx, OLT (optical line termination), but also OTN solutions as well as effective customer service, project management, this makes more sense for telcos to manage opex and costs.
How does FiberHome differentiate itself from competitors in the market?
Our biggest advantages are our technology solutions. Our company has grown from a research institute owned by the Chinese government, and this experience has given us the DNA and capabilities to provide a full range of optical-fiber solutions to telecom operators.
FiberHome is the first vendor in China that started research and development in FTTx technologies – in 1998. We have achieved a lot of milestones – developed the first long-wave-length optical device used for fiber-optic communication and the first STM-16 SDH equipment, among others.
With 15 years of research in FTTx technologies, FiberHome has applied for more than 1,000 technical standard proposals and patents to industry bodies such as ITU-T, IEEE and CCSA.
We’ve already supplied over 50 million units of FTTx (including FTTB, FTTH etc) ports to more than 50 telecom operators around the world since 2004, 50% of which were deployed in China. According to Ovum, FiberHome ranked as the No. 4 FTTx vendor in the fourth quarter in 2012.