Optical components maker II-VI beat Wall Street s earnings per share estimate for the fourth quarter in a row. The company reported earnings of $0.73 a share on revenue of $787 million during the second quarter of its fiscal year 2021. About 62% of its revenue came from the communications market, where it sells a wide range of products – things like optical amplifiers, subsystems and coherent optics – to vendors like Ciena and ZTE.
The company is realizing gains from its 2019 Finisar acquisition at a much quicker rate than expected. We are well ahead of our plan to achieve our 3-year $150 million total synergy target set for the Finisar acquisition in September of 2019, said Chuck Mattera, the company s CEO, on today s earnings conference call. II-VI is a year ahead of its original target, in fact. We re 12 months ahead of schedule, and we are now increasing our 3-year total synergy target to $200 million, Mattera added.
Harmonic made more progress with CableOS, its virtualized access network platform for both hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks, in Q4 2020. But the overall deployment still represents a small fraction of the modems served by those customers.
Harmonic said its cloud native CableOS product was deployed commercially with 44 customers at the end of Q4 2020, up 91% versus the year-ago period, with six more coming on board since the end of Q3 2020. Those deployments covered 2.6 million served cable modems, up roughly 500,000 from the 2.1 million served at the end of Q3 2020.
Deployments of CableOS are expanding, but the current crop represents just 5% of the 50 million-plus modems served by Harmonic s early CableOS customers.
Also in today s EMEA regional roundup: Vodafone and MTS stay friendly; Nokia slices FWA for Saudi Arabia s Mobily; mobile sales slump at Dixons Carphone.
As Donald Trump heaves his massive overcoat into the sunset, leaving an almighty mess in his wake, the European Commission is getting excited about a potential new era of collaboration in the tech sphere. Speaking to a plenary session this morning (Wednesday), European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: When it comes to digital tech we have a lot to offer the new US administration As the first step, I can imagine a common technology council being set up [between the EU and US] and together we will write a rule book that will be valid globally, going all the way from privacy rules to security-critical digital infrastructure. Cooperation? Collaboration? Crazy times.
Also in today s EMEA regional roundup: Vodafone gets in on the drones act; BT faces class action over landline charges; Deutsche Telekom eggheads investigate quantum-assisted artificial intelligence.
Three UK has gone all the way to India for help in configuring its 5G core, tapping Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to ensure it integrates correctly with the accompanying 5G radio access network. TCS software will, say the two partners, speed up configuration checking and reduce manual errors. Three is in the process of pushing out a new 5G RAN, and has so far established live services in 175 towns and cites across the UK. (See Three UK hits reset on IT and 5G overhaul and Three UK to Go Big on 5G for Home Broadband.)
Also in today s EMEA regional roundup: Deutsche Telekom s Access 4.0 platform goes live; everyone loves Tim Höttges; CityFibre rolls into Sunderland; EE extends unlimited mobile data offer for NHS workers.
OneWeb, the satellite communications company jointly owned by the unlikely combo of the UK government and India s Bharti Gobal, has secured additional funding from SoftBank Group and Hughes Network Systems, bringing OneWeb s total funding to $1.4 billion. OneWeb was declared bankrupt in March 2020, but in July the British government and Bharti said they would each invest $500 million in the operator to build a satellite-based navigation system that can be used as an alternative to Galileo, a European Union project, following the UK s departure from the EU. (See Eurobites: OneWeb emerges from Chapter 11, hires new CEO and Bharti Global, British government consortium wins OneWeb bid.)