What Chinese talk in telecom BBS: March 18

About China Mobile:

"China Mobile, Tencent calls you to go back home to study", This is the title of a thread on C114. The title uses a very popular internet style language to attract readers, the content is about the strategy that China Mobile should adopt to develop mobile internet market. The author suggests China Mobile to learn from Tecent (a company holds the largest internet chatting service customers in mainland China on its QQ brand.) His three suggestions are: differencing brand, giving old customers more services, increasing the connection among different services.

A blog by China Mobile research institute on Sina wrote that China Mobile will be the only winner in the coming LTE generation. Compared to China Mobile, Unicom has less subscribers than before after separating CDMA network to China Telecom, also, Unicom's WCDMA still has problem on basic phone service. As China Telecom, they have several mobile networks like Xiaolingtong, 2G CDMA, 3G CDMA2000 at the same time. Both Unicom and Telecom face large difficulty on transferring to LTE。

About Huawei:

Tianya Netizens continue discuss Huawei employee's salary. They can’t reach an answer on how much an engineer can earn in Huawei after 3 years work.

About new triple-play policy:

Hongkong public company, China Neo　Telemedia　Limited (a former media company) purchased Foshan Langxun (it has the same name in Chinese with Lucent) who is the builder of FOshan city's wireless network. A Sina blog wrote that triple play in China is really a sure thing from this acquisition. He also suggested not to sell the stock related with triple play.

From C114, a branch company of China mobile cooperates with local Cable TV service provider to compete with China Telecom on broadband service. China mobile is in charge of promotion, cable TV service provider is in charge of network. The two companies shares the profit from their service. is said the combined service is much cheaper than what China Telecom provides in that area.

More fiber optics news about China: www.cordacord.com

Raycus and fiber laser industry in China

March 17, 2010, In Shanghai Laser and opto-electronic show taken place from March 16 to March 18, Wuhan Raycus (www.raycuslaser.com) introduced several pulsed or continuous fiber laser with out power range from 10W to 100W. The company is reported to have the ability to manufacture fiber laser value of 100million RMB each year.

As the first special high power fiber laser developer and manufacturer in mainland China, Raycus was founded by US fiber laser industry veteran Dr. Yan dapeng in year 2007. Yan and Huagong Laser, a subsidiary of Wuhan public company Huagong Tech, each owned 50% share of the company but Dr. Yan has the key power to control the company. From Raycus's website, Yan and Huagong laser invested 30million RMB in the company each in year 2007. Huagong laser was reported to sell her 32% share in Raycus for 63.36 million RMB last week. They still keep 18% share of Raycus.

From 1996 to 2007, Dr. Yan worked in several US universities and companies, including University of Illinois at Chicago, Wright State University, Zybron Company, Lasersharp Company and Nufern Company. From these work, he accumulated much experience on fiber laser, semiconductor laser package. He has 3 US patents. Before 1996, he worked in Nanjing Polytech University.

Among tens of mainland China's fiber laser companies, Raycus is the most successful one. But up to day, the company didn't announce any real orders. Compared to its international competitors like IPG, SPI, JDSU, they have no resource on doped fiber or pump laser manufacturing, and it is difficult for a start up company to enter this market. For this kind of product, I don’t think Raycus can copy OEM business model from other low end components manufactures.

According to some market report, the scale of international fiber laser market is reducing. Maybe it is a good time for companies like Raycus to accumulate resource during this hard time. Raycus still has some advantages like her good relationship with China's government, also there are more and more high power passive fiber component manufactures in China these years. If Raycus can really find a niche market in China, it will have very good potential.

More fiber optics news in China, visit www.cordacord.com

What Chinese talk in telecom BBS:March 15 2010

March 15,2010, If you want to know more about what happened in China's telecom industry, you not only need to notice news releases, or reports from journalist, you also need to notice what those netizens write on some internet bulletin board and blogs. Sometimes they are a very useful and interesting information source. From today, we will try to collect some contents from telecom BBS in China to help you further understand this industry.

1) About telecom service providers
China Mobile invested Pudong Development Bank. A netizen from SOHU wrote:” This is really a strategy investment; it will influence the future of telecom industry in China. "
About Unicom's WCDMA network. There is a popular thread called "Unicom destroys WCDMA by 3 gunshots". Which 3 gunshots, the first one, wrong person on the position, the 2nd, blind adjustment, the 3rd, bad management. WCDMA has more technology advantage compared to two other 3G technologies, but it seems Unicom can’t change this technology advantage into her profit advantage.

2)About equipment suppliers

If Commerce Ministry will approve that HP purchases Huawei 3Com, it is still a question. A netizen from C114 wrote:"if the merge is approved, HP will have more than 65% market share on high-medium end datacom products. in China. It is not a good thing to the info security of China because H3C's products have been already deployed in many governments. "

Is it a good choice to go to work in Huawei from a foreign enterprise in China? A thread from Tianya gave a NO answer. The reasons include too many extra works, too high pressure, not humanity managements.

Another thread in Tianya introduces Huawei's salary structure. According to this thread, a new graduated university student can earn 800USD to 1000USD in Huawei, an usual engineer with 5 years experience can earn 2000USD, and those high ranked managers in Huawei can earn 5000 to 8000 USD. It is really the same with a US company.

A C114 thread compared the job service of Erission, Nokia Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent's Chinese website, and found Erission provides better service than other 2 competitors. Some other authors pointed out that Alcatel-lucent China adopts 51jobs.com (A Chinese job website)'s OEM services in this field, that is the reason they did worse job compared to others.

3) About fiber/cable suppliers

A SOHU blogger interviewed Mr. Zhou zhonglin, member of China's fiber and cable industry committee. In his blog, Mr. Zhou pointed out that China's government must give specail policy support on the development of fiber preform. Without this support, privet companies don't have the capability to take this burden.

4) Others
A Tencent Blogger wrote that Uincom will reduce iPhone's price. As the only provider of Apple's iPhone, China Unicom set up a price that many customers think a little high.

The proposal of NPC Deputy Tong from Accelink

March 11,2010, At the ongoing National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing, there is a deputy from fiber optics industry, Mr. Tong,guohua. He is the chairman of Accelink, the largest state-hold component manufacture, especially on passive components in mainland China. What is his proposal this year?

The name of his proposal is "Fully using advantages of Donghu(East Lake) national hi-tech zone in city of Wuhan, forging ahead development of strategic new industry."

Then what his real meaning behind this proposal? According to an interview with Secuitimes Newspaper, Deputy Tong suggests that government should pay more attention to developing new strategic industry, including fiber optics industry. And it is very important to make use of capital market to help development of these new industries.

"In Premier Wen's government report, he mentioned many times about transferring method of economic development, adjusting industry structure. He also mentioned six new strategic new industries, one of them is information network. As a fiber communication component supplier, this provides large space for the development of Accelink. " Tong said.

Accelink went to public in Shenzhen stock market in last august. Tong told the reporter that they are upgrading the product portfolio and marketing channel using the money from the stock market. He pointed out that the stock market is very important for companies like Accelink. Next step, they will make R&D and market development quicker and better.

Tong said, "the new triple play policy from the government brings good opportunities for Accelink. Many of their products related triple play services, and they are working on some new products special to this market. "

More fiber optics news from mainland China, please visit www.cordacord.com

HG Genuine revenue increases 74% in year 2009

March 9, 2010, When I visited HG Genuine (www.genuine-opto.com/english/index.jsp), a Wuhan transceiver company, in last summer, the company gave me an unexpected welcome, and their optimism towards the whole year also gave me very deep impression.

HG Genuine was founded in the bubble times. As a transceiver star-up, the company once attracted many talented engineers and sales. But with the break-up of the bubble, HG Genuine entered a long-term difficult time. It was once considered to have the best transceiver manufacturing facility in Asia, but it still could not acquire big customers. As a result, HG Genuine had to work with small sized customers who are often of bad credit on payment. In China’s fiber optics industry, many people were once pessimistic towards this company, but HG Genuine survives till now, and the company has really grown up.

According to HG Genuine’s parent company, Huagong Tech (000988 Shenzhen Stock Market)’s 2009 financial report, in the last year, HG Genuine’s revenue reached 292.5million RMB (42million USD), a 74% increase compared to year 2008. In year 2009, HG Genuine’s net profit is 33.84 million RMB, there is no data to compare in year 2008. The gross profit rate in year 2009 is 24.45%, a 0.85% decrease compared to year 2008. Now, Huawei, ZTE, Raisecom (one of the largest medium converter manufacture in China), Optowiz (a Korean transceiver company) are the 4 largest customers of HG Genuine. In year 2009, Huawei purchased 62 million transceiver form them, ZTE　also purchased 58million from HG Genuine. In year 2009, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens also became their customers.

HG Genuine owes their success in year 2009 to China’s large scale 3G construction. The company pointes out that there will be 5 new market opportunities for them in the short future, continuous 3G construction, further deployment of FTTH in China, launch of next generation PTN network, coming triple-play services by telecom and Cable TV service providers, the new M2M application. China’s telecom market will continue to increase in coming years, and international market will have a recovery. Based on all these, HG Genuine predicates that they will have a 40% CAGR in the coming 3 years, which means their revenue will come to 800 million RMB in year 2012.

More news about China fiber optics industry, Please visite www.cordacord.com

TD-LTE Advanced becomes Chinese 4G standard

March 2, 2010, After TD-SCDMA, Chinese hope their TD-LTE Advanced becomes another ITU-T standard. According to Mr. Wu,Hequan, the next generation wireless broadband technology project leader in China, Chinese TD-LTE advanced standard has been accepted as one of the 6 4G standard drafts of ITU-T.

In fact, TD-LTE Advanced draft was accepted by ITU-T last October in an ITU-T conference in German. Five other drafts from Japan, Korea, 3GPP, and IEEE were also accepted by ITU-T. It was predicted that ITU-T will make final selection in this October.

The same with TD-SCDMA, Chinese owns nearly all patents of TD-LTE-Advanced. The technology is based on TD-SCDMA, and was first introduced in year of 2004. After several years research work, the standard draft was generally accepted by the whole wireless communication industry in mainland China.

In this year’s Shanghai World Expo, a TD-LTE demonstration system will be build in the exhibition. Based on TD-LTE, many applications like wireless ticket will be provided. According to Wu,Hequan, China has also made arrangements on developing products of TD-LTE related chips, terminals, measurement instrument etc.

Not only Chinese suppliers show their interests on TD-LTE, Big wireless companies like Motorola also step into this field. For example, Motorola was one of the 2 equipment suppliers for the TD-LTE trial network in 2010 Shanghai Expo. Another supplier is Huawei. ZTE, Datang, Alcatel-Lucent, Erission also joined the bid for the trial network.

In year 2008, China Mobile , Verizon and Vodafone once announced to jointly develop TD-LTE technology in Barcelona. According to China Mobile, they have planed to deploy more than 100 TD-LTD base stations from the 2nd quarter of this year.

China Mobile selects PON and fiber suppliers

February 25, 2010, China Mobile today announced the selection result on GPON/EPON suppliers. Huawei, ZTE, Shanghai Bell, Erission, Fiberhome win the GPON bid, and ZTE, Huawei, Shanghai Bell, Fiberhome become EPON suppliers of China Mobile. Erisson didn't join the EPON bid. China Mobile didn't publish the details of this selection. In China, this is the first time for large scale GPON selection by a major telecom service provider. Not like China Telecom and Unicom, China Mobile decided to choose both GPON and EPON technology, and they will prefer GPON technology.
Also in today, China Mobile announced that they will begin this year's fiber and cable product bid process. China Mobile will mainly select G.652 and G.653 fiber suppliers this time, any supplier with the right products can join the bid. According to China Mobile, there will be 2 rounds of check. First round, they will make selection based on paper material submitted by the suppliers. Second round, they will make on field check of the suppliers. Only passing these 2 rounds check, a fiber supplier can join the final bid of China Mobile.
The deadline for submitting the bid material is March 8, 2010.

Tianjin Unicom's FTTH network covers 58 communities

February 24, 2010, Tianjin Unicom has just announced that their FTTH network has covered 58 communities in the city which is 200KM east of Beijing.

Tianjin Unicom began to build FTTH access network last year. Up to the end of last year, they have coverd 300K subscribers. Tianjin Unicom plans to cover all citizens （10Mbps）and enterprises (100Mbps) in the city in 3 to 5 years through their FTTH network.

Now Tianjin Unicom has began to accept registration for the FTTH service in the 58 communities. They also said they will not increse the tariff for the new FTTH broadband service.

Tianjin is not the only city who aims at FTTH network in mainland China. Before them, Wuhan, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shanxi province all have similar FTTH city projects. But Tianjin Unicom really wants to become a leader in this wave of FTTH construction in mainland China.

In order to build high quality FTTH networks, according to the website of Tianjin Unicom, they have published a "FTTH engineering standard", also they developed some new products like double side ODF, fiber splitter in the building jointly with the equipment suppliers. Now they can finish FTTH installation in just 4 days after they accept request from the customer.

Free WiFi: Chinese Version

February 24, 2010, Do you want to have free WiFi service? You don't need to depend your local government to provide this service, or you don't need to go to a Macdonald, what you need to do is just to buy a new wireless gadget,"WiFi decoder".


This gadget only costs you about 150-200 RMB. It is just like a computer mouse, with USB interface and antenna which helps it easily find all wifi networks within 2KM range. The "smartest" function of this gadget is that it can automatically decode the encryption of any WiFi network it detects.


According to a retail of this WiFi decoder in Foshan, a city near Guangzhou, the gadget is just high power wireless network card integrated decoder software. By sharing with other people's internet connection, a user of this gadget can free access the internet. The only result is that the original internet connection owner will have to endure much slower speed. In a computer store in Foshan, a retailer can easily sell this more than 10 of this gadget each day.

So who develops these products? You can not find the name of manufacture on the product. According to those retailers, all these WiFi decoders are imported from Hongkong or Shenzhen. And this product appeared on the market earlier this year.


Obviously, no matter you sell or you use this gadget, you are against the law. But in today's China, There are so many grey zones that you can get benefit without being punished. This Chinese version Free WiFi is really a special result of today's China.

SARFT stops IPTV services in 14 cities of Guangxi

February 23,2010, Although SARFT (state administration of radio, film and television) and MIIT（Ministry of Information Industry Technology）have agreed to push ahead triple play service jointly in mainland China, IPTV service for telecom service providers still face “red light” in many areas. Just now, SARFT stopped the IPTV service run by Guangxi Telecom in 14 cities of Guangxi Province, a province in southern China close to Vietnam.

On February 9, SARFT ordered that Shanghai Television Station to stop provide IPTV signal source to Guangxi and Xinjiang Telecom, also they asked Guangxi Telecom must stopped their IPTV service and said the service is against current law. SARFT forwarded their request to the Guangxi local government. 3 days later, all IPTV services run by Guangxi Telecom in 14 cities were stopped, just before this Chinese new year.

It is not the first time to happen this kind of thing. Since IPTV services were introduced by telecom service providers in mainland China in about year 2005, SARFT basically does not want to cooperate. Only in a few cities like Shanghai, Haerbin, Hangzhou, under control of the join-venture company by local Cable TV service provider and telecom service provider, IPTV is officially provided to the public.

Not only SARFT does not want to cooperate with telecom service providers, telecom service providers also do not want Cable TV service providers have telecom services like VoIP, internet service. In recent history, conflicts like cutting cable of the other side, causing damage to equipment of the other side happened many times.

Video service is still the ace of cable TV service providers today in mainland China. Compared to big scale telecom service providers, video service is the only advantage for cable TV service providers. That is the reason why they are so nerves that some telecom service providers begin to provide video service.

It is a good thing that cable TV service providers are still blessed by government today. According to the most recent triple play policy, SARFT will play a major role in the first 2 years. SARFT still has the top responsibility to check all video services around mainland China. A new national cable TV service provider is under construction. There are still 2 years time left for them.

Hengtong builds southern manufacturing base in Dongguan

February 23, 2010, Dongguan, one of the largest optical fiber and cable manufacture in mainland China, Hengtong group (600487 Shanghai Stock market) just announced they will invest 250million RMB in Songshan lake industry zone of Dongguan city, Guangdong province to build their southern manufacturing base. In the future, Hengtong will mainly develop and manufacture new special fiber, cable, copper cable in this base. The predicated revenue will reach 400 million RMB each year.

Mr. Qian,jianlin, general manager of Hengtong pointed out that they would make Songshan lake base as their southern headquater. Songshan lake base will help Hengtong develop southern market, even southeast Asia market quickly.

With 1.5billion RMB market value, Hengtong now has nearly 18% market share in China's fiber and cable market. Their new fiber preform product will also help them gain more market share in the coming years.

China closes 136，000 websites

February 10,2009, According to Xinhua news agency, since last december, China 's government has closed 136,000 websites under the flag of clamping down internet pornography. MIIT（Ministry of Information Industry Technology）and its sub-branchs in each province play a key role in this clamping down.

According to government's data, up to now, they have checked nearly 1.8 million websites whose server locate inside mainland China， closed 136K unregistered websites and 126 accesee service provider. At same time, CNNIC (China Internet Information center) and 55 internet domain providers checked 13.5 million doman name, nearly 80% of all domain names in mainland China, stopped 12,000 domain name transfering.

China's government says that what they do is according to China's law, and it is helpful to clean the internet environment in China. The action is welcomed by the public since its start, but the public didn't notice the negtive effect of the action, or they daren't not critisized government.

Then what is the negative effect. That is there is no space for personal websites in mainland China in the future, that is it will be more difficult if you want to public your own opinion on internet, that is operating small websites will be more difficult.

Don't think that 136000 websites who are closed by government are all pornographic websites. Many of them are closed just because they didn't make the registration, or their original registraion deleted by government(They only allow enterprises to make registraion, not person). Also if a website want to have BBS or blog services, you have to satisfy many stricted requirements set up by the government.

Government's clamping down is really a disaster for many personal website owners. Somebody may want to move their website server to overseas provider, but considering the "Internet Great Wall" of China, that is not a good idea. It is very possible that their website can not be visited in China or become very unstable. .

No one doubts China's government has a good intention to do this clamping, but many times, a good intention also can lead to bad result. You cannot say, China's government is smart this time. To have all internet websites controlled by the government, maybe it is also another aime of this clamping down.

Emerging Chinese national cable TV service provider

February 9, 2010, For many years, Chinese telecom service providers have been lucky for not needing to compete with cable TV service providers. But their fortune may comes to an end in year 2010. A new national CATV service provider in mainland China is reported to be organized by the government.

From Xinhua news agency, high-ranked officers from MIIT（Minstry of Information Industry Technology）and SARFT（State administration of radio and film, television）have announced that government will adopt kinds of supporting policy to organize a new national CATV service provider in mainland China. This new CATV service provider will represent whole Cable TV industry to provide triple play service. Early than this announcement, it is rumored that China’s government will invest 20 billion RMB to organize the new CATV service provider.

Several weeks ago, China’s government announced the triple play policy officially. According to this policy, CATV services providers can provide telecom service, and telecom service providers can provide TV services in the future. Because China’s telecom service providers have much more resources than CATV service providers, there are 3 years protecting period for CATV service providers. In the first 3 years, Both Cable TV service providers and Telecom service providers can make some trial networks, but CATV providers can have more support from the government, such as they can provide VoIP service which only telecom service providers can do before.

In mainland China, Cable TV service are provided mainly by local companies. Each city, even each town has their own cable TV companies. Not like telecom service providers, there is not a vertical managing system them although they are managed by SARFT generally. But it is local government not SARFT who has stronger influence on these local cable TV service providers. Just because this, these small cable TV services have no advantages to compete with those national telecom service providers like China Telecom whose revenue is much higher than them.

During the past 20 years, SARFT has never given up to organize a national cable TV service provider. And they really organize several provincial cable TV service providers, such as Beijing Gehua Cable TV, Hunan Cable TV. They even build a national transmission network. This time, with the great support from central government, SARFT may finally have a national cable TV service provider. But without experience, without talented engineers, can they really compete with telecom service providers?

WTD boasts vertical integration advantage on PON transceiver

February 4, 2010， Wuhan, As the largest state-hold transceiver company, Wuhan Telecom Device (WTD)company also has the longest history in China's fiber optics industry. The fast growing company just published their first white paper to introduce their opinion on transceiver technology and their advantage on transceiver.

The first question, How WTD looks at GPON and EPON technology? With full line of EPON and GPON tranceivers, WTD believes that GPON and EPON will live together for a long period. Compared to GPON's technology advantage EPON does better job on product maturity and commercialization. GPON can not replace EPON in a short time.

The second question, what is the real advantage for WTD on PON transceiver? The answer is WTD is the sole Chinese supplier that can manufacture DFB-LD and APD chip themselves. WTD now can produce these chips 18K every day, and their manufacturing ability is still expanding. Few competitors have the supplying ability like WTD in China。

The 3rd question, What is the latest PON product for WTD? During last month's FOE show in Tokyo Japan, WTD demonstrated their 10G EPON Diplexer SFP+ transceiver. Many customers show interest on this product.

After nearly 30 years development, WTD shows stronger ambition on international market. They just opened Tokyo office last month, and next month they will come to San Diego again to attend OFC/NFOEC. Today's WTD is more active, with more energy, and more ambitious than many of their competitors.

More fiber optic news about China, Please visit www.cordacord.com

China Telecom aims at 20Mbps bandwidth per home in 3 to 5 years

February 2 2010, It is just reported that China Telecom will finish fiber access network upgrade in major cities in 3 to 5 years to bring 20Mbps bandwidth to all subscribers in big cities.

This fiber access network will be mainly a FTTB network, only in some developed areas, FTTH will become available. China Telecom will guarantee fiber connected to all commercial buildings and new residential buildings in major cities. For residential subscribers, their bandwidth will be 8Mbps to 20Mbps。In rural areas, China Telecom will connect fiber to each village in eastern China. In western China, 80% villages will have fiber connection. Based on this connection, China Telecom will provide 4Mbps bandwidth.

Compared to today’s popular 1M or 2M bandwidth service, the new 20Mbps bandwidth service is really a big leap. This bandwidth will provide great flexibility for China Telecom’s new services including IPTV. China’s government just turned on green light for triple play. China Telecom’s new 20Mbps plan should aim at this policy change.

Before today’s report, China Telecom already made some FTTx trial networks, especially in Shanghai and Wuhan. Last year, Shanghai Telecom announced to invest 6billion RMB to build fiber access network. Their aim is to realize 100M to each home, 1000M to each building. In year 2011, Shanghai will have 3million homes connected to 100Mbps bandwidth. For China’s optical vally, Wuhan also announced their FTTx project. Late August, Wuhan Telecom became the first service provider to provide 20Mbps residential bandwidth service.

Not only, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile also have their ambitious FTTx plan. For fiber optics industry, it is really exciting news.

More fiber optics news about China, Please visit www.cordacord.com

Top fiber optics stories of 2009 in China

1/3/2010, Most of China\"s fiber optics companies had a very good year 2009. I cannot only pick 10 stories happened last year,you should know more what happened in China in this industry. 1) 3 fiber optics companies went public, including Accelink, Sun&sea and Keybridge. 2) Dr. Charles Gao won Noble Physical prize though he is not a Chinese citizen. 3) Huawei became No. 1 optical network equipment supplier in the world. 4) China Telecom and Unicom made bid on PLC coupler, Broadex, Aofiber etc became the winners. 5) OneChip from Canada used CIOE to be their product publishing platform. 6) More proviences announced to build FTTx city. 7) Manufacturing capacity became the key issue faced by Chinese fiber optics suppliers. 8) Huawei made 10G GPON test with Verizon, ZTE won Italy GPON contract. 9) JDSU Shenzhen\"s worker went on strike against factory sold. 10) Neophotonics China was rumored to go IPO next year. 11) ORTE became the winner in public test on coupler products by Dalian Science&Technology University. 12) A Beijing company annonced to build 3 POF manufacturing base in North China. 13) More passive companies introduce their polirization products. 14) Zhongtian, Tongguang makes progress on undersea cable technology. Huawei found undersea cable business. 15)Huawei, ZTE, Fiberhome, Shanghai Bell won the PTN bid by China Mobile. 16) China Telecom and ZTE jointly hold 10G EPON standard international conference. More EPON ONU manufaqctures appeared. 17) China Science Technology University in Anhui build world\"s first quantum communication network. 18) YOFC build their Tianjin cable manufacturing base through merge with Tianjin Xinmao. 19) Baocheng company in Shanxi build their first FOG product line. 20) China Telecom in Taiwan has more than 1.51million FTTH subscribers.

If you want to know more about fiber optics industry in China, Please browse http://www.cordacord.com/

After Charles Kao won Noble Prize in Physics

10/15/2009, About one week ago, Chinese American, Dr. Charles Kao was awarded half of the 2009 Noble Prize in Physics for his pioneer work on fiber optics communication. This award pulls at many Chinese’s heart strings. Some people wonder when Noble prize in Science can award to a Chinese citizen. Some people are happy that fiber optics gets recognition from Noble Prize committee.
Charles Kao is not the first Chinese American to get the Noble Prize, the crown jewel of the science research. As before, the award of Dr. Kao excites so many Chinese in mainland China, Hongkong and Taiwan. Although he had lived and worked in Hongkong for more than 10 years, he is the fellow of Central Academy of Taiwan and Chinese Science Academy of maindland China, he is still a citizen of the U.S.. His university education was from U.K. and the work leading to the award was finished in UK also. So many journalists, bloggers, criticize that it is education system in China that obstructs Chinese scientists from creative work. The research environment in China is not suitable for creative scientists. Some others have different ideas. One blogger wrote that Chinese shouldn’t take Noble Prize so important, and Chinese don’t need the recognition from foreigners. Another Chinese American Noble Prize winner, Dr. Chen Ning Yang insisted that Chinese citizen would win the award in 20 years. It is interesting to compare this situation in China with Canada. This time, there are two Mcgill graduates who won this year’s Noble Prize. Both of them worked in U.S after their graduation. Canadian media doesn’t discuss these scientists are Canadians or Americans, otherwise they are happy on their achievements, and they feel sorry that Canada can not attract them to work in their own country. Why Canadians and Chinese have different feedback on the similar situation?
Dr.Kao’s award has another very positive affection on all fiber optics engineers, researchers. Since the first fiber cable was manufactured according to Dr. Kao’s theory in early 1970’s, this technology has made very big advancement. The advancement is so big that it is very hard for today’s researchers and engineers to make new improvements. Investments from both public and private side on this technology are dwindling. Wireless technology gets more and more attention from the government, form the investors. A friend of mine, who is a professor on fiber optics technology told me that he was so happy to see Dr. Kao’s award. From this award, fiber optics will attract more attention than before.
When Dr. Kao was still the president of the Chinese University of Hongkong, I was an exchange student in E.E department which Dr. Kao founded in 1970. I once had an opportunity to listen to his speech. I had forgotten what he talked about that day, I only remembered that he was talking in Mandarin with a typical Shanghai accent. In an environment where everyone uses Cantonese, Dr. Kao impressed me very deeply. It is my honor that I once worked in the same university with him, and I became a fiber optics engineer after my graduation.

Rumor: JDSU will sell its Shenzhen factory to Fabrient

12/14/2008, There is a rumor circling around the fiberoptics industry in Shenzhen. JDSU will outsource all its optical components business. It is even said that the Shenzhen factory of JDSU will be sold to Farbrinet with only 2million USD. Somebody says that JDSU doesn’t own all the equipments of this Shenzhen factory, the land is also rented from local government. So they have already discussed the transfer with several potential buyers. But up to today, JDSU still didn’t make the final decision.
We asked this news to JDSU Shenzhen, but no feedback. Their marketing guys don’t want to talk about this with us.

Facing the global economical crisis, not only JDSU has problem. Other big Chinese fiberoptics companies also have problems. Photop, one of the largest component manufactures in China, was said to make layoff, their orders also shrink 20%. A spokesman from this company said their business not only based on fiberoptics, they also had display, optics etc business, so the crisis will not make big problem for them.
Another big company who make layoff is Neophotonics China. In the end of last month, they laid off 10% employees. They also pull off all their recruiting advertisements.

Contrary to this shrinking, some enterprises are considering expanding. We just heard a long time agent company in this field just purchased a new factory in Shenzhen, they prepared to assembly TOSA and ROSA. They told us they could find very good employees with lower salary in this special time. They didn’t see any sign of crisis, But they think the elected president of US, Mr. Obama will bring new hope to the communication industry. They think it is just the time to enter the manufacturing of fiber optics components.

Is Huawei to save the world, or China to save Huawei?

11/26/2008, Below artical is excerpted from Mr. Shi wei's blog in Chinese. I didn't translated the full article. Mr. Shi is a famous macro-economic researcher in a state-hold institute in Beijing. He wrote many articles about 3G communication industry in China.

I visited Huawei again this september, it is the 3rd time I visited this company in recent years. During this visit, we have a very serious topic to discuss with Huawei, Does the winter of Huawei really come this time?From this visit, I feel Huawei has not been the strong horse during the past years, it has changed to a fat elephant. Once high sensitive nerve center of Huawei has become slowly responsive. Huawei has already a kind of pride which is everywhere, which is cutting the connection of Huawei and her extendings.

In early year 2007, Huawei was still satisfied with her enough cash reserve, but in the 2nd half of year 2007, Huawei has fallen into the 2nd cash shortage since her birth. Huawei tried to sell her cellphone handset department with a half- suiside way, but they failed on this.

A high ranked officer of Huawei who met me several times told me this time:"I will not be suprised if Huawei die tomorrow." The huge fat body , the long market battle line, have become the unprecedented challange for Huawei. Their organizating ability, the method to fullfill the request of international market, understanding to modern competitation, cannot keep up with their leader, Mr. Ren,zhenfei's request. Thousands of employees, directors of Huawei have lost their once great Huawei sprit. A kind of laziness, lackness of responsibility has spreaded among the employees of Huawei. I am thinking, today's Huawei, maybe considered a saving power of telecom industry in the world, but maybe because of this power, Huawei forgets to save herself.
From my point of view, Huawei faces below crises:

1)Unequlized support from government: As a private company, Huawei cannot get the same support from government as the support for ZTE.

2)Huawei is success in overseas market based on their low price strategy, but this further make their financial burden heavier. Those international rivals of Huawei are becoming stronger. The profit of Huawei from 2006 to 2008 came more from costdown but not sales.

3) In 3G domestic market, Huawei has lost the leader position in TD-SCDMA market.

4)The financial situation of Huawei hasnot improved for a long time. They have not enough methods to find new money.

So based on all these analyse, I think the coming global financial crise will have more impacts on Huawei than their domestic rivals in China. The overseas market cannot save Huawei, only China's market can save Huawei. But How China save Huawei?

Browave provides competitive EDFA OEM/ODM Service

11/27/2008, LR thinks this news a kind of advertisment, so I have to publish it here.


Hsinchu, Taiwan, Browave Corp., a professional and leading OEM/ODM manufacturer in the fiber optical communication industry, provides competitive service in optical Amplifier products, like Gain Block and EDFA modules, for applications in CATV, PON and Metro networks. Since 1998, Browave is devoted to the development of cutting edge technologies in fiber optical key components and opto-electronic integrated modules.
Combined Taiwan's quality/management system and China's low-cost manufacturing base, Browave keeps offering high quality and competitive-price products to worldwide top-tier companies and has been awarded as the best supplier in various occasions. In recent years, with the commitment of IP-protection and quality assurance, Browave has received significant OEM/ODM contracts of Gain Block and EDFA module products from US and Japan major brands.
With tremendous delivery tracking records in the past ten years, Browave has proved the design and production capability of key components for EDFA products, including GFF (Gain Flattening Filter), High Power Isolator, Mini Tap Coupler, Pump WDM, IWDM, IPD and OSC (Optical Surveillance Channel) filters etc. Based on the key component supplying advantage to offer a under one –roof manufacturing and the reliable operation system, Browave will be your best partner to support your every requirement.
You are welcome to visit our website www.browave.com for more information or directly contact Frank.Cheng@browave.com for further assistance.

Wu hequan:Broband development is government's duty

10/22/2008, Just before the Beijing communication show 2008, Vice prisident and fellow of China engineering institute, Mr. Wu, hequan said in a forum that broadband development is government's duty.
As he said:"Broband brings service converging, the strategy of broadband developing is not the task of those carriers, government should have right policy to promote this. "He points out that compared to the 40Mbps bandwidth in Korea, 20Mbps in Hongkong, Chinese internet users only have less than 2Kbps average bandwidth. China still has a long way on broadband development. Wu also said, the most important service for broadband is video service, but because of policy problem, Chinese carriers still can not develope video service in full speed.
I agree with Mr. Wu that government's policy is the key block on the development of broadband in China. But I also want to point out, as a former high rank officer from China Telecom, Mr. Wu didn't point out that Chna didn't allow cable TV service providers to run voice service freely. Cable service providrs are in very weak position compared to those big telecom carriers. That is the reason they try their best to block telecom service providers enter video market.
The most important thing in China's telecom market, and on the strategy of broadband developing, it is to build a fair environment for competition, not only for telecom carriers, but also for cable TV service providers.