An optical subsystems startup, Nistica, still in steath mode, has announced a new round of funding and gave some clues to what types of products it is developing:

Only through optical switching between the network core and the access infrastructure can carriers meet this delivery challenge. Nistica will help operators affordably automate, simplify and incrementally scale WDM wherever they need it.”

Industry analysts estimate that nearly 100% of central offices in the North American market will require more than one optical wavelength for meeting the projected growth in network bandwidth. Today only 10% of central offices can cost-justify expensive core Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexing (ROADM) technology. Nistica’s subsystem technologies are designed to fill this key cost-performance gap for telecommunications systems manufacturers.

Nistica CEO Ashish Vengsarkar states, “We provide the ability to automate the network edge at a small fraction of the cost of today’s technologies that automate the network core. While providing low-cost solutions, we deliver two essential qualities to the network edge: high optical performance, and telecom-class reliability.