In the last financing round, Optillion secured funds of SEK0.5bn ($50m) from investors like American Cisco and Swedish Investor. Hopefully, this will see the company through to production. Although a bit later than planned, installation of equipment started about a month ago at the company's manufacturing site.
"We decided to have our own production plant at an early stage. Manufacturing of optical components is still not easy to contract out to others and it is more of a lab activity," says Evaldsson.
By designing their transceivers so that they can be produced at low cost, Optillion will try to survive in a market with several American and Japanese competitors. The aim is to develop products in the SEK10,000-20,000 price range.
The two transceivers the company has promised to introduce during autumn 2001 are both intended for 10Gbit Ethernet, but for 10 and 40 kilometres respectively.
Gittan Cedervall