EXFO

EXFO
Public (NASDAQ: EXFO, TSX: EXF)
Industry Telecommunications
Founded 1985
Headquarters Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
Key people
 Germain Lamonde, President and CEO
Products Network testing: optical, transport, datacom, copper, xDSL, IP triple-play
R&D and manufacturing testing: 3G, LTE optical, transport, datacom, IMS, VoIP
Service assurance: Monitoring systems for voice, video, data and mobile services
Revenue Increase$269.7 million USD (2011)
Increase$22.1 million USD (2011)
Number of employees
 1600 (2012)
Website www.exfo.com

EXFO is a company that designs and manufactures test and service assurance instruments for fixed and mobile telecom networks. Its products include optical, transport, datacom, 3G, LTE, copper, xDSL, IMS and VoIP test platforms used by network operators and network equipment manufacturers to assess the telecom infrastructure and the telecom services carried on it. EXFO is headquartered in Quebec City, Canada and has approximately over 1200 employees worldwide.

Founding

EXFO was founded in 1985 in Quebec City (Canada) by Germain Lamonde and Robert Tremblay. Its original products were portable testing products for optical networks. In 1996, EXFO started designing products for optical component and optical system R&D and manufacturing. The company has since added 3G, LTE, protocol, copper/xDSL, IMS and VoIP test and service assurance products, mainly through acquisitions.

Acquisitions

ByteSphere LLC, Boston, US [Date: April 1, 2014]

ByteSphere’s solutions feature advanced patented techniques for infrastructure performance management, including network element polling and fault management. ByteSphere’s products and tools are used by some of the world’s largest tier-1 network operators and Fortune Global 500 companies.

NetHawk Oyj Oulu, Finland [Date: March 12, 2010]

NetHawk Oyj, headquartered in Oulu, Finland, brings to EXFO almost 20 years of experience in characterizing mobile networks, including a market-leading position in testing 4G/LTE networks. Key products include protocol analyzers for testing, troubleshooting and optimizing 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE and core networks as well as high-performance network simulators for load generation, regression and functional testing. It's estimated the company holds the No. 2 position for both protocol analyzers and network simulators in terms of market share. In addition, NetHawk has developed a 2G, 3G, and 4G/LTE service assurance solution focused on testing the core and radio access networks of a wireless communications infrastructure. NetHawk has about 370 employees mainly located in Finland, India and the United States.

Brix Networks Boston, MA [Date: April 22, 2008]

Brix Networks, a privately held company headquartered near Boston, Mass., is a global provider of open and extensible converged service assurance solutions. Brix Networks' distributed, probe-based solutions proactively monitor next-generation, converged IP networks to assure that voice, video and data services are delivered with the quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) demanded by users. The company offers comprehensive VoIP and IPTV testing, 24 hours per day, seven days per week, across the three most vital areas that impact the success of a real-time service: signaling quality (signaling path performance), delivery quality (media transport performance) and content quality (overall quality of experience). Brix Networks' solutions are used by telecom companies, mobile service providers and cable TV operators to guarantee the successful launch and profitable, ongoing operation of their VoIP, IPTV and managed services, while large enterprises deploy its offerings to achieve successful rollouts and widespread organizational acceptance of their new, real-time IP applications.

Navtel Communications Inc. Toronto, Ontario [Date: March 26, 2008]

Navtel : Communications, a privately held company founded in 1976 with headquarters in the Toronto area, is a leading provider of Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) test solutions for network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and network service provider (NSP) labs.

Consultronics Limited Toronto, Ontario [Date:January 5, 2006]

Consultronics, a privately held company founded in 1973 with headquarters/operations in Toronto as well as operations in Southampton, UK, and Budapest, Hungary, is a leading supplier of test solutions for copper-based broadband access networks. It ranks among the vendors in handheld x-Digital Subscriber Line (xDSL) testing with a global market share of 13.4%, according to Frost & Sullivan.

gnubi communications, L.P. (now EXFO Gnubi Products Group) Dallas, TX [Date:September 5, 2002] gnubi™, a privately held company in Dallas, TX, is a supplier of multi-channel telecom and datacom testing solutions with an established customer base of Tier 1 optical transport equipment manufacturers and R&D labs. The company's flexible product line enables cost-effective bit error rate testing (BERT) of SONET/SDH and Gigabit Ethernet optical systems reaching data transmission rates of 10 Gb/s. The gnubi solution, which is scalable for current and next-generation optical systems, can simultaneously test multiple communication ports in lambda routers, optical switches, cross-connects and DWDM systems (DS1 to OC-192, E1 to STM-64, GigE) on a single platform.

Avantas Networks Corporation (now EXFO Protocol) Montreal, Quebec [Date:August 23, 2001] Avantas, a Montreal-based, pre-revenue company that recently released datacom and telecom testers capable of measuring up to 10 Gb/s systems, is a supplier of leading-edge fiber-optic testing and optical network performance management equipment that supports a wide range of protocols and data transmission rates

EFOS, Inc. (now EXFO Photonic Solutions) Toronto, Ontario [Date: March 6, 2001]

EFOS is in precision light-based adhesive spot curing technologies as well as curing process control for the global optical component manufacturing market.

Burleigh Instruments, Inc. (now EXFO Burleigh Products Group) Fishers, NY [Date:November 6, 2000]

Burleigh is a supplier of DWDM wavelength measurement instruments and precision positioning equipment.

Products

High Speed

Power BlazerTurnkey field-test solution for deploying, validating and troubleshooting networks up to 100G.

Optical spectrum analyzers (OSAs) for analysis of CWDM and DWDM networks.

3G, 4G/LTE

Network Simulation and Load Testing

Network Analysis

Fronthaul/Backhaul

NGN Service Assurance

FTTx/Access

Competitors

References

    External links