Fujitsu Delves Into Metro DWDM

Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. (FNC) today launched two new products aimed at the metro DWDM market: the Flashwave 7410 and Flashwave 7420 (see Fujitsu Intros Metro DWDM Platforms). The company also took the occasion to explain what gear it has available for each part of the metro network.

Fujitsu is mostly known as a leading metro Sonet player. It launched its strategy to enter the DWDM market through a reseller agreement with ADVA AG Optical Networking (Frankfurt: ADV), announced weeks ago (see Fujitsu Brings ADVA Stateside).

The new Flashwave 7410 edge or premises device and Flashwave 7420 metro access platform for points of presence originated from ADVA's Fiber Service Platform (FSP) 500 and FSP 3000 boxes.

The move gives ADVA an in with RBOC customers that it previously lacked -- and the new products help plug holes in Fujitsu's metro DWDM portfolio. "Technologically, [Fujitsu] hasn't exactly been keeping up and, to some extent, there may have been some pressure from their big RBOC customers to come up with a strong metro DWDM solution," says Mark Lutkowitz, vice president of optical networking research at Communications Industry Researchers Inc.

The new metro DWDM boxes are far from just ADVA gear with a Fujitsu label, says Parker Blackwell, Fujitsu's VP of metro marketing. For one thing, the products now work with Fujitsu's network element management software. Fujitsu also changed the interface for both products from the IP-based Simple Network Management Protocol to the TL1 transaction language, which is more familiar to big carriers.

Through it all, though, Fujitsu says it has maintained the simplicity of ADVA's original product design. "The worst thing you can do is launch a new, complex technology in an RBOC account," Blackwell says.

Fujitsu says that both pieces of new gear will be compatible with Telcordia Technologies Inc.'s Osmine standards by the fourth quarter of 2002. The company also has manufacturing rights to ADVA's technology in North America. The Flashwave 7410 will compete with several products, including ONI Systems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: ONIS) ONLINE2500 and Nortel Networks Corp.'s (NYSE/Toronto: NT) OPTera 5100 box. The Flashwave 7420 will compete with ONI's ONLINE9000 and Nortel's OPTera 5200, the company says.

So how's Fujitsu doing in the metro? The company is a leader in the market for metropolitan Sonet transport equipment, but a no-show practically everywhere else. Though its revenues dropped year-to-year, market researcher RHK Inc. says Fujitsu's share of the overall metro equipment market (which includes Sonet transport) increased to 50.6 percent in 2001 from 42.3 percent in 2000.

Fujitsu's Sonet menu includes the Flashwave 4100 for edge applications, the Flashwave 4300 for access aggregation and grooming, and the Flashwave 4500 for connecting interoffice facilities. The company says it is the only next-gen Sonet provider deployed in, or under final evaluation and negotiations with, every single RBOC.

On the WDM side, Fujitsu is just beginning to find its way and hopes to build on its installed base within its largest customers, including Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ). Its WDM products now include -- in addition to the Flashwave 7410 and the Flashwave 7420 -- the Flashwave 7500, an all-optical box for metro core applications, to be officially unveiled at Supercomm 2002.

FNC currently employs fewer than 3,000 people, down from 3,500 earlier this year.

— Phil Harvey, Senior Editor, Light Reading
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