Capella Enlists Fabrinet

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In response to the explosive market demand for ROADMs, Capella today announced the completed transfer of manufacturing of its WavePath product line to Fabrinet’s new 250,000 sq ft. Pinehurst facility in Thailand. Capella also announced today, it has added another patent to its impressive intellectual property portfolio which now is comprised of 17 issued patents, among others pending worldwide.

Capella is the industry leader in the design and development of next generation Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) technologies for use in reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexers (ROADM) and optical cross connect applications (OXC). The ROADM market is growing at 65% CAGR and is expected to be a more than $700M market by 2008, according to Infonetics market research firm.

Capella has been working closely with Fabrinet to establish and ramp up its volume manufacturing operations. “We’ve been collaborating with the Fabrinet team for the past two and a half years, and I am extremely impressed with the Fabrinet team and their operations in Thailand,” commented Larry Schwerin, president and CEO of Capella. “Fabrinet (www.fabrinet.com) is a state-of the-art contract manufacturer and has proven its capability of volume production of intelligent optical subsystems. Fabrinet has met or exceeded all required certifications including achieving TL9000 certification, a key telecommunications quality standard, in November 2005. We have been extremely pleased with the expertise provided by Fabrinet and look forward to continuing our relationship as we focus on expanding our WavePath portfolio.”

The market for WSS technologies is growing significantly as systems vendors integrate them into their next generation products to enable cost effective IP-based networks. “We’re experiencing rapidly growing demand for multi-degree WSS ROADM functionality in our converged MSPP and ROADM systems,” said Eyal Shaked, Executive Vice President and General Manager of ECI Telecom’s Optical Networks Division. “Fabrinet’s sophisticated production management and quality control systems provide Capella with the advanced production capability to meet ECI’s WSS product requirements.”

Capella Photonics Inc.