Corvis: Cruising at light speed
Optical expert raises the bar for telecommunications networks.
By J.D. Mosley-Matchett -- Movers and Shakers, 6/15/2001
| AT A GLANCE | |
| Corvis Corp |
However, he is far from the stereotypical notion of a myopic scientist. Huber has founded and built more than one company in his efforts to deliver leading-edge telecommunications solutions based on fiber-optics. In 1992, Huber founded Ciena Corp, serving first as chief technology officer and later as chief scientist. Prior to that, he held positions with such industry leaders as General Instrument, Rockwell International, Optelecom, and ITT Industries.
His first entrepreneurial venture, with Ciena, began with the realization that he could commercialize a technology that would allow fiber-optic cables to carry significantly more signals. The technology is called dense wave division multiplexing, or DWDM, and it uses different wavelengths of light (referred to as “colors”) to transmit multiple streams of information through a single fiber. The resulting streams expanded the capacity of long-haul cables by 16 times. In February 1997, Huber took Ciena public in the largest IPO of a technology company up to that time.
He then established Corvis in June of 1997, where he serves as president, CEO, and chairman of the board. As the first company to provide totally optical solutions for long-haul backbone communication networks, Corvis went public in July 2000 and proceeded to break new IPO records—despite facing a declining market.
On the day of the Corvis IPO, the Nasdaq retreated 179 points, or 5 percent. Yet despite such an inauspicious setting, Corvis generated $1.14 billion and became the largest IPO that any startup technology company had ever launched. At the end of its first day of trading, Corvis enjoyed the largest market capitalization of any technology startup, when it reached $33.2 billion.
Endeavoring to meet the high expectations of his shareholders, Huber has led Corvis to raise the bar in the telecommunications industry by introducing the first end-to-end, totally optical core network products. The company’s CorWave products are changing the way public networks are constructed by eliminating electronics in the data transport and switching path.
Standard optical transmission equipment takes the electrical signals generated from communication devices, such as phones and computers, and converts them into light waves that are transmitted along a strand of fiber.
However, as each light wave travels through the fiber, it degrades. Ordinary networks include equipment that regenerates these light waves by converting them into electrical signals and then back into light waves so they can continue to travel through the network.
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| David Huber, President and CEO, Corvis |
Optical signals transmitted through the Corvis system can travel as far as 3,200 kilometers without regeneration, compared to the 300- to 600-kilometer limit of standard transmission systems. At least one carrier, Williams Communications, used Corvis equipment to achieve an unprecedented 6,400-kilometer transmission without regeneration—an expanse greater than the distance between Boston and San Diego.
Service providers who deploy Corvis products to build an all-optical network can deliver exceptionally long-distance data streams with transmission speeds reaching 400 gigabits/second per fiber. The company’s latest offering is CorWave LR, which promises to deliver transmission speeds reaching 3.2 terabits/second.
Service providers can use the Corvis system to differentiate themselves in a competitive market by increasing network capacity and providing new services to their customers quickly and efficiently—while at the same time significantly reducing total network costs.
Part of Huber’s leadership task involves attracting some of the top employees in the telecommunications industry. The exposure he has received from developing and marketing innovative optical communications systems has helped him to attract senior-level technicians and executives from around the globe.
Those global resources will serve Huber well as he takes Corvis international with locations in France, the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain. It may seem like a blazingly fast expansion for such a new company, but Huber is an expert at managing the speed of light.
