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Published on: 3/4/2001
Last Visited: 1/14/2003
The telecom industry is not yet ready to take fiber optic networking to the next level, warns J. Wilbur Hicks, chairman and chief technology officer of Southbridge, Mass.-based startup Terabit Optical Networks (TON).Carriers are balking at deploying a "home-run system" that will bring fiber to every home, he judges.
With more than 80 patents and 1,000 inventions in the field of fiber optics, Hicks is
acknowledged as a pioneer in the field.He recently spoke with Fiber Optics News on his view about the future of fiber optic technology and how his startup fits into the picture.
FON: When you look at the future of fiber optics, what do you see?Hicks: For the world, I look forward to a system that will have enough long line capacity to accommodate every telephone user in the United States at the same time with a video phone.That is about 1, 000 times the bandwidth or capacity of the present U.S. system.
I also anticipate that it will be a home-run system with fiber running all the way through the home and every subscriber will have dedicated bandwidth.There will be a broadcast system that will have 10 million channels from which you can choose what you want.
The long line market will be much smaller than people anticipated.
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Hicks: It depends how long it will take to convince the telephone operator companies and the manufacturers that this is the route to go.Once the yare convinced, I would think about a year and a half.
FON: How will you convince the manufacturers and telephone companies to go down this road?Hicks: [I will tell them] that this system that l am describing is the one they should go for.All they are interested in now is putting Band-Aids on the system they have just little upgrades here and there.They are not really interested in building a good system from the ground up.
You have to have the telephone companies, system providers, and the component providers all agree that this is the way to go.I can't introduce a new component unless the systems people are involved.I can't introduce another system concept unless the component people are already making it.
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Hicks: Our focus is to build components that will eventually be placed in the system I am describing.We are building our intellectual properties to generate the funding to get to the next level.Once we attract the necessary financial institutions, we can speed the process to market.
FON: What is the most critical mistake that TON and others in the industry must avoid as they move forward in developing the products you would like to see?Hicks: It is an absolute mistake to go to higher and higher bit rates, unless someone has SONET installed and they require the higher rates.They should be going to more and more wavelength channels.
FON: What impact do you think the current slowed-down in capital spending will have on the industry?Hicks: In the present economy, the whole business will slow down for a while.And I think the stock prices coming down have a very negative effect on the [risk-taking] of these companies.When their stock comes down, they can't be very attractive...
FON: Do you envision that startup companies will move the industry forward?Hicks: The only chance of anything really big happening is for someone to come into the market with a different point of view and with access to rights of way.This could be the power companies getting into bed with some telephone operator company like AT&T and putting together a national program using separate companies for specific regions.So there might be 50 regions with the telephone operator company holding a minority in each of those regions to get around any monopoly problems.I believe the electrical power companies would do this.They are desperate for income.Other than that, I don't know where we go from here.
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Hicks: I sleep at night.I usually come up with two or three inventions every night in my sleep. lam crazy.
(For:J Wilbur Hicks, William Kiritsy, TON, 508/765-1228.)
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Welcome to the future according to J. Wilbur "Will" Hicks, 77-year-old inventor and pioneer in the field of fiber optics.
"I'm not saying these things should happen," said Mr. Hicks, a Sturbridge resident who retains the drawl of his native South Carolina even though he has lived in Massachusetts for nearly half a century."I'm just saying people should be aware of what will come."Mr. Hicks' ideas aren't the ramblings of a science fiction fanatic.He holds more than 80 patents and has invented more than 1,000 products, including 15 kinds of fiber sensors, the first fiber laser, single-mode fiber and many other products that make up today's most advanced fiber-optic systems.
As a 30-year-old working on a CIA-funded project at American Optical Co. in Southbridge in 1954, he played an integral role in the development of fiber image scramblers, an early step in learning to transmit information over fiber-optic lines.At the time, American Optical was one of the three largest optical companies in the country.During the 1960s, his company, Mosaic Fabrications Inc. of Sturbridge, created the technology behind the night-vision goggles used in the Vietnam War.A serial entrepreneur, Mr. Hicks left Mosaic in 1966 and founded, during the next 20 years, five more companies, all working in fiber optics.
Today Mr. Hicks is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Terabit Optical Network LLC, a Southbridge startup company trying to implement his vision of the perfect fiber-optic communications network.
So while Mr. Hicks was present at the beginning of fiber optics -- the systems of pure glass that carry information using light -- he spends most of his time today thinking about its future, and how he believes fiber optics will change the world.
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Mr. Hicks, whose mind is so active he routinely attaches notes to his wrists as reminders, begins with the idea that existing fiber-optic networks are built "all wrong," in his words.They use too many costly components -- such as $1 million repeaters and $20,000 amplifiers -- because, he said, they cannot keep information in optical form long enough.
Information is transmitted over fiber-optic lines as light, allowing it to travel across enormous distances almost instantly.
To direct information properly, however, existing fiber-optic systems, as presently designed, must convert information in and out of optical form several times before it reaches its destination, Mr. Hicks said.He argues that information should remain in light form until the end of its trip.Furthermore, he said, he and his colleagues at Terabit have developed the technology to create just such an all-optical network -- something of a holy grail in fiber circles.
Once such a system is adopted, repeaters and amplifiers will be used far less, lowering the cost of fiber-optics networks while increasing their efficiency, Mr. Hicks said.The advantages of such a system are mind-boggling, he said.It would transmit 1,000 times the amount of traffic current systems handle.A homeowner linked to the system would be able to use 10 telephones, 10 videophones, 10 computers, 10 faxes, and 10 televisions all at the same time on less than one-fourth of the system's capacity.The broadcasting system created out of such a fiber-optic network would be large enough to deliver 16 million channels, Mr. Hicks said.More than 200 television programs could be offered in three different formats.Up to 20 channels would be dedicated to what he calls immersion video, or 3-D, high-resolution wrap-around video that would look as real as real life.
All of the programs would be repeated every hour for a week.The rest of the channels could be used to carry every movie, book, song, newspaper and magazine ever made, as well as everything on the Internet.
He has even calculated the cost of building such a network: $1400 per home.
So sure is Mr. Hicks of the ease of creating such a system that he is astonished it does not already exist.
"It's hard to figure out how it hasn't been done already, it's so easy to do now," he said, immediately scribbling a sketch of such a system and how it could be put together.
The increased use of drones in everyday life is an obvious outgrowth of the creation of an all-optical network, Mr. Hicks said.Drones are robotic devices that can be remotely operated by a person using a computer.As Mr. Hicks puts it, "the drone sees what you see, and the drone does what you do."Using an all-optical network, drones can be operated in countless situations, Mr. Hicks said.
Fire departments will send drones into dangerous buildings to fight fires.Police departments will use drones to remove an armed suspect barricaded in a building.Drones will remove toxic waste, work in nuclear reactors and allow surgeons to operate on patients a continent away.
Drones called "squirrels" will be used to string fiber sensors along every telephone pole in America, building up a massive network for wireless communications.Drones called "moles" will operate underground, installing new pipes or working in weakened tunnels and small ducts.
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