- Petaluma, California-based startup Petaluma, California-based startup announced it raised $25 million in Series B funding
Tibit Communications — a Petaluma, California-based startup that is developing next-generation access devices for Passive Optical Networking (PON) — has announced the completion of $25 million in Series B funding led by Intel Capital and including two new investors Swisscom Ventures and AJU IB Investment. The Tibit MicroPlug OLT (Optical Line Terminal) solution is considered a revolutionary departure from legacy fiber access solutions that are traditionally part of large and proprietary chassis with multiple internal switching layers.
“Tibit’s MicroPlug OLT and cloud-based management solutions disrupt the PON market in specifically the areas that carriers are looking to unlock on their networks – interoperability, solution disaggregation, and network virtualization. We see their solution as uniquely positioned to help carriers enable next-generation architectures for access and management solutions,” said Swisscom Ventures partner and Tibit board observer Pär Lange.
Tibit fits all PON Layer 1 and 2 functionality inside the space of a transceiver optics case that plugs seamlessly into standards-based and commercially-available switches. This allows carriers a very flexible and cost-effective deployment for fiber access. And the elimination of unnecessary management layers within the OLT equipment itself further enables PON management to be virtualized and moved into the carrier’s cloud architecture.
“Tibit creates data center economics for the PON access market by making PON a simple Ethernet component and a catalog item for Ethernet switch suppliers for markets like Korea that are pioneering next-generation broadband speeds,” added AJU IB Investment partner Michael Jeon.
Intel VP and Intel Capital senior managing director Dave Flanagan pointed out that the Tibit MicroPlug technology showcases the power of virtualization as it provides “more flexibility, higher density, and lower cost by deploying PON in general-purpose Ethernet switching equipment and management solutions, which can be entirely virtualized on Intel processor-based servers.”
“We are pleased with the caliber of investors we have attracted to invest in our revolutionary pluggable PON technology,” explained Tibit president and CEO Richard Stanfield. “This includes the Series B participation of Tibit’s existing investors, Intel Capital’s lead role in this round, and now the entry of the investment arm of global telecommunications leader Swisscom Ventures and Korea’s leading venture capital investor AJU IB Investment.”
