Coherent and Kinetic Extend Partnership to Enable 100G Services Leveraging the Industry’s First 100G QSFP28 0 dBm Dco Transceiver

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Coherent Corp. (NYSE: COHR), a leader in optical communications transceivers, and Kinetic by Windstream, a leading provider of fiber-based connectivity, collaboration, and security services for businesses and homes across an 18-state footprint, today announced that their existing partnership to enable 400G services has been extended to enable 100G services at the edge of the network, leveraging the industry’s first 100G QSFP28 0 dBm digital coherent optics (DCO) transceiver.

The rapid growth of data traffic driven by enterprise and cloud networks, including the exponential growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, is driving demand for next-generation transmission technology that enables service providers to efficiently expand the capacity of the transport network. With the new high-power 100G transceivers from Coherent, Kinetic will be able to optically connect routers directly to access, metro, and regional transport networks without additional intermediary interfaces, eliminating an entire layer of optical equipment.

“The 100G QSFP28 DCO transceiver with 0 dBm output power is the industry’s first, and it enables Kinetic to deploy 100 Gbps coherent transceiver technology in the access aggregation networks efficiently and sustainably,” said Matthias Berger, Vice President, Coherent Technology, Coherent Corp. “These benefits are achieved thanks to the transceiver’s unique features, including Coherent’s Steelerton® DSP optimized for 100G, cost-efficient silicon photonics technology, high-power indium phosphide semiconductor tunable lasers, and Flextune® technology.”

“We are pleased to expand our partnership with Coherent, which has been vital in accelerating the scale of our network in a sustainable way as we continue to deliver on our commitment to bring fiber connectivity to businesses and homes across rural America,” said Jeff Austin, Chief Technology Officer at Kinetic. “Coherent’s high transmit power 0 dBm 100G QSFP28 DCO transceivers will add to the existing 0 dBm 400G QSFP-DD DCO transceivers to enable Kinetic to deploy greatly simplified network architectures. This will further accelerate the revolution in IP-over-DWDM networks to achieve efficiency and scale across our 18-state network, affording Kinetic a highly competitive operational model.”

Kinetic validated the new 100G transceiver technology through a live network trial consisting of 820 km transmission over 14 cascaded ROADM nodes. The live trial was achieved over a production link at 75% channel capacity carrying a mix of 10G, 100G, and 400G signals from multiple technology generations. The 100G transceivers operated flawlessly end-to-end over the network, exceeding optical performance requirements and validating the IEEE electrical interface standard.

Coherent will demonstrate the 100G QSFP28 0 dBm transceiver at ECOC 2023 in Glasgow, Scotland, Oct. 2-4, Stand #406. At the conference, Coherent will showcase the most recent additions to its broad portfolio of differentiated solutions for telecom and datacom optical networks.