Infinera Bags Big Bear

The other paw drops today, as Infinera Inc. plans to announce it is the other buyer for Big Bear Networks's assets.

Startup Big Bear is in the last stages of shutting down, and last week the company announced it had sold its 10- and 40-Gbit/s transponder business to Finisar Corp. (Nasdaq: FNSR). (See Big Bear Put to Sleep.) The rest of Big Bear had been sold to an undisclosed "chip" company that turns out to be systems company Infinera -- whose technology admittedly stems from home-grown indium phosphide (InP) chips.

Infinera says it's picked up Big Bear's intellectual property and hard assets related to electronic dispersion compensation. Four of Big Bear's employees have been brought on board, and "a handful of others" are acting as consultants, says David Welch, Infinera's chief strategy officer.

Infinera has been using Big Bear's technology "for several years now," making the deal a natural fit, Welch says.

Big Bear's chips perform electronic dispersion compensation, a technology that can be used to clean up a signal to make transmissions more reliable at high speeds and/or long distances.

Infinera will continue using Big Bear's chips, eventually integrating the technology with Infinera's other electronics. Infinera will not sell Big Bear's chips to other companies, Welch says.

— Craig Matsumoto, Senior Editor, Light Reading