Baba: Main problem has been getting a product that can be mass-sold at a nice profit.

I think the main problem has been market perception and the pendulum effect.

The promotion of this company was pretty extreme during the days of the GaAs platform. If you go back to the UCONN lab tours you will hear with  certainty how good that tech was as presented by the PHD’s that were gathered. Can this be transferred to mass production? The answer was absolutely.  I believe that the potential is still there. I don’t think we were sold a bill of goods but we were not presented with a true representation of risk ether. Inventors tend to have a different view. We felt confident in Geoff Taylor’s work because at every step of the way we were being told that Geoff’s vision went beyond theory and focused on the ability to build his devices with real world tools. We know that the technology has exception abilities which were clearly demonstrated by what was achieved. So there was extreme hype that seemed warranted right from the start. That hype was maintained at many steps along the way. I think we all got sucked into that vortex.

Today that pendulum has swung the other way. The current management are keenly aware of the level of hype that existed and are doing what they can to ground expectations.

What they have achieved is pretty extreme when you look around at what others have done in a similar amount of time. And don’t kid yourself for even a minute. That is the result of exceptional management.

There is a quote I heard recently  regarding optical integration from an unnamed source. I have not spent the time to get to the bottom of it but here it is.

What has been accomplished in a mere 18 months, basically on a shoestring (despite the proclamations of various posters), is nothing less than extraordinary.  It took 18 years for INTEL to get a product to market, and it still can’t do CWDM.