Ekinops opens new optical transport headquarters, R&D hub in Lannion, France

Ekinops has opened its new headquarters and R&D hub for optical transport activities in Lannion, capping off over two decades of growth. 

With support from the Lannion-Trégor Communauté organization, the company renovated a 3,700 m² building.

"The long-standing partnership between Lannion-Trégor Communauté and Ekinops illustrates our commitment to accompanying and supporting the growth of innovative companies in the region,” said Gervais Egault, President of Lannion-Trégor Communauté.

Key telecom hub

Ekinops’ decision to locate its new facility in Lannion reflects the region’s dedication to telecom innovation.

While Brittany is known as France’s critical agricultural region, the area established itself as a key telecom hub in the early 1960s. In 1962, Pleumeur-Bodou, one of Lannion’s neighboring towns, was the site of the first satellite transmission between the USA and Europe.

Lannion has taken on the moniker of "Breton Silicon Valley," with several large telecom companies, such as France Telecom (now Orange) and Alcatel (now NOKIA), Sagem, Highwave Optical Technologies, Algety-Corvis, and more recently Ekinops, Ideaoptical, Bktel Photonics, EXFO, Lumibird, Exail, and Ericsson, all having operations there.

Ekinops said the new facility, which occupies a 20,000 m² site, is ideally located in the heart of France's historic center of telecommunications technology. The company added that the building not only meets the need for shared workspaces but also meets strong environmental standards with improved energy efficiency.

According to Ekinops, the region has a large population of technology experts, including  including 3,500 PhD holders, researchers and engineers specialising in hardware and software developmen.

Wide geographic reach

Lannion is just one of several regions where Ekinops operates today.

In addition to Ekinops France, based around Paris in Massy (France), it has facilities in Rockville, Maryland, Brazil and other entities in Germany, Spain, Australia, India, Canada and Belgium. Ekinops' research and development is spread across seven R&D sites: five in EMEA (Lannion, Sophia Antipolis, Massy, Leuven and Geneva), one in Brazil (Campinas) and one in India (Bangalore).

Besides its R&D hubs, Ekinops has commercial representation in more than ten countries, including Australia, Sweden, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Kazakhstan and the United Kingdom. Through its global footprint, Ekinops provides support services to its customers internationally and now has customers in over 70 countries.

The company’s breadth of locations will enable it to drive innovations it is developing for its core optical and growing business customer base.

Despite weathering challenging economic conditions in the first quarter of 2024 as revenue declined to $30.3 million, the company continues to pursue new opportunities to innovate around 800G optical and SD-WAN. 

The company saw some gains in the Access segment while readying itself to take advantage of emerging 800G optical and SD-WAN networking trends. 

In March, Ekinops established a foothold in the burgeoning 800G optical market with the debut of its PM_800FR04 pluggable module for the Ekinops360 WDM optical transport system, which is based on its FlexRate™ technology.

Ekinops has also positioned itself to take advantage of the SD-WAN market segment. One of its critical recent moves was to acquire the "5View" software suite from Infovista, an infrastructure management software editor for mobile and fixed networks.

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