Novera Optics

About Novera Optics

Novera Optics, founded in 1999 as Ultraband Fiber Optics, developed fiber-optic access technology to resolve bandwidth limitations in last-mile networks. The company's focus was on creating solutions that extend high-speed carrier Ethernet services from optical core networks to customer locations, targeting equipment vendors and service providers. One of its key technologies was Wavelength Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Network (WDM-PON), an access and transport platform designed to help service providers deliver combined voice, data, video, and wireless services. The company also developed product families like SpeedLIGHT and TurboLIGHT, which were based on dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology for Fiber-To-The-x (FTTx) applications.

The company was founded by Dr. Yoon Kim and had Kirk Flatow as its President and CEO in its early years, followed by John Barton who was CEO at the time of its acquisition. Novera Optics raised significant venture capital, with a Series C round in March 2001 reaching $102 million and total funding reported to be over $122 million from investors including Redpoint Ventures, Intel Capital, Agilent Ventures, and Enterprise Partners Venture Capital. A key milestone was a commercial deployment with Korea Telecom, delivering over 50,000 lines of its WDM transport technologies.

On August 4, 2008, Novera Optics was acquired by LG-Nortel, a joint venture between LG Electronics and Nortel, for approximately $16 million in cash with potential for an additional $10 million in earn-outs. The acquisition aimed to integrate Novera's WDM-PON technology into LG-Nortel's Carrier Ethernet solutions to enhance the delivery of FTTx services.