Broad Light Boss Can′t Wait for GPON

Andrew Vought, the CEO of BroadLight Inc. , says the fifth round of funding his company announced on Tuesday should be its last. (See BroadLight Bags $12M More.)

"We believe that this $12 million is that last investment that the company will require till we are true break even and getting to cashflow positive in 2008," Vought tells Light Reading.

BroadLight currently takes in about $10 million a year in revenues and has raised around $50 million in funding. As the company begins to achieve profitability over the next year, Vought says there's a good chance you'll see an S-1 with BroadLight's name on it.

"Being profitable creates options. Quite frankly, the most attractive of those is a public offering. I see no reason why this company as it goes through profitability would not be a successful public offering candidate."

BroadLight is the current market leader in the GPON chip space. But adoption of the technology has been slower than the vendors would hope for, and there is currently only one major customer in North America -- Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ - message board).

"There has been slower than desired transition at Verizon from BPON to GPON because the BPON solution works so well," says Vought. But might the company's strong business with Verizon's BPON vendors mean that BroadLight would be content with the slow transition?

"Although we do have a profitable BPON business, in our own self interest we would wish for a speedy transition. We recently crossed the threshold of our 50th design win for GPON. That is four times the number we have for BPON."

Vought also has high hopes for the much larger European GPON market. "We are looking at the supply chain of Orange FT and all the leading GPON deployments everywhere in the world. While Asia is not as clear in our vision as Europe, we are quite bullish about the prospects for GPON in Asia outside of Japan."