Rickface: The VSCEL can be tuned to various frquencies, but the manufacturing costs don't change because it's the same laser just tuned to a different frequency. I'm hearing you say it's not about the number of lasers but it's more about the number of different laser types that need to be developed and it's those development costs that are most important.

I am talking about multiple lasers where each of them is tuned to a different wavelength or "color". Let me quote Suresh Venkatesan:

• And really the fourth distinguishing feature again comes about by this integrated capability of the POET platform. Since all the components of the POET platform are in the optical engine integrated, our cost, if you will, tend not to scale linearly with the number of channels, like a typical AOC does. So the cost benefits which we believe are already significant for a single channel, multiplies for multi-channel configurations.

That is, using POET and in contrary to SI Photonics, you can add as many lasers and detectors to your transceiver as you wish, without adding (significantly) to manufacturing costs.