Formerly the head of Lucent's optical networking group, Bosco left in August and took a position with Clarity Partners LP (Los Angeles), a venture capital firm. Clarity in September had teamed with Japanese investment firm Marubeni Group to finance the OpNext spin-off to the tune of $450 million. Clarity owns one-third of OpNext, Bosco said.

Clarity named Bosco president and chief executive of OpNext on Jan. 18.

OpNext makes lasers and laser modules, particularly for OC-48 (2.5 Gbit/second) and OC-192 (10 Gbit/s) transmission. Its primary market is the network core, where OC-48 systems are beginning to give way to newer OC-192 equipment.

Bosco intends to hammer down the cost of OC-48 lasers to bring them into higher-volume applications. Having worked with optical systems at Lucent, Bosco said a large portion of a system's cost lies in the laser diodes themselves. "The cost of these optical systems is in the transmitters and the receivers," he said.

That cost has relegated optical systems to the esoteric network core, Bosco said. "If you can get the cost out of that 2.5 Gbit/s [laser], that's going to go into the [metropolitan-area network]. Then watch it explode," he said.

OpNext also will continue developing higher-end components. The company already has good 10 Gbit/s technology thanks to a hard-pressed effort by Hitachi going back to 1996, Bosco said. For its 40 Gbit/s parts, OpNext is turning to indium phosphide manufacturing processes, a move that it's discussing with several potential foundries, he said.

Several laser startups have begun to emerge, but Bosco expects his competition to come from the larger players — JDS Uniphase Corp., Corning Inc. and Lucent spin-off Agere Systems Inc. "And I don't think we've heard the last from China," he said.

OpNext eventually will expand its horizons, possibly getting into pump lasers, but the company won't try to become a broad-based supplier along the lines of JDS Uniphase, Bosco said.

Most of OpNext's 300 employees will remain in Japan, but a headquarters and sales office has been established in West Eatontown, N.J.

Clarity hasn't revealed whether it plans to take OpNext public, but a public offering is "certainly one of our key options right now," Bosco said.