Low margins have kept the big optical component players out of the GPON market, but that's not stopping Finisar Corp. (Nasdaq: FNSR - message board) from making a play there.

    Finisar first tipped its GPON plans at OFC/NFOEC in March, but the company hasn't been pushing hard for publicity on its efforts. (See Finisar Demos at OFC.) Now, CEO Jerry Rawls tells Light Reading Finisar's GPON experiment is on the verge of liftoff.

    "Our expectation is that we'll have qualifiable OLT [optical line terminal] products for sure in about October. My guess is, the qualifiable ONU [optical network unit] products won't happen until about the first of the year," he says.

    Fiber to the home is expected to be a high-volume market, but because it's ultimately targeted at consumers, the margins are low. That's not the cheeriest news for an industry where the biggest players keep struggling for breakeven earnings.

    One problem is that the ONU -- the box sitting at the customer's house -- has to be cheap; moreover, carriers want ONUs to interoperate, making it easy for them to switch vendors. But Finisar is finding carriers don't want an optics supplier that does just the OLT side.

    "We're encouraged to do both, by both the service providers and the equipment companies, because there are no Tier 1 optics suppliers today supplying PON products," Rawls says. "But where its mostly attractive for us is at the OLT end, because that's where value pays off."

    Suppliers like Emcore Corp. (Nasdaq: EMKR - message board) and MRV Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: MRVC - message board) might take offense at not being included in the "Tier 1" camp, but it's true that most of the big telecom optics suppliers have avoided PON. JDS Uniphase Corp. (Nasdaq: JDSU - message board; Toronto: JDU), in particular, continues to say it's not interested in selling PON transceivers.