Tellabs Blog

Sometimes the future arrives sooner rather than later.  Take energy-efficient access technology, for instance.  Its future actually arrived a few years ago, in the form of the Tellabs Optical LAN. 

Back in 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) brought together more than 60 experts from the energy, telecommunications and IT industries.  DOE wanted them to brainstorm ways to boost the energy efficiency of, among other things, data centers and telecommunications equipment.

The U.S. government is funding a program to improve public safety. It’s called FirstNet, which has $7B currently available to build a nationwide, public safety network using LTE.

On Sunday we celebrated the retirement of Tellabs co-founder and chairman, Michael J. Birck.  About 400 people came to Naperville from far and wide to wish Mike well.

Mike founded Tellabs in 1975. The company started out with $110,000 raised by the founders and a $50,000 loan from a local bank. Most of the founders took no salary the first year.

My conversations with service providers lead me to believe that OTN switching technology will begin increasing in metro network deployments, in order to further transport efficiency. In fact, we’re testing our new OTN upgrade for the Tellabs 7100 series in customer labs today.

While LTE smartphones drive growth in small cell deployments, the enthusiasm among ecosystem stakeholders is tempered by significant challenges with the new technology. Infonetics Research has pointed out that operators are having many operational and financial challenges with the new business model. Based on operator feedback, it seems that weak operational procedures as well as deficient tools and technologies are the most critical pain points.