S&UP, and how it will grow from <0 to $250,000,000 in revenue by 2030

coming out

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

S&UP was first launched in March 2023 under a fiction category in Substack.com described as a science based, mysticism infused kind of prose poem - (The Ear Implant Foundation | Substack).

It has since morphed into a variety of topics and notions, but always under the S&UP moniker.

This post reveals the true nature of S&UP aside from the prose.

Photonics and specifically optical fiber and fiber optics lie at the heart of today’s rapidly growing technologies including but not limited to supercomputing, quantum computing, all forms of artificial/machine learning and with applications which span all other technologies and the globe.

A hierarchy of human resource would range from scientists, physicists and engineers all the way to installers, technicians and construction along with a host of skills in between.

Photonics is the science; optical fiber is the plumbing. It could be said light is the raw material.

My first exposure to this world was in the prototype department of AMP Incorporated, its headquarters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, during the 1970s while working in the injection molding room. Some of the first ferules for mechanical splices came out of that room, it was also there where a small office was inhabited by a man scribbling endlessly on a chalkboard; the sign on the door read “Bell Labs Fiber Optics Research”.

Inspired by my ex-marine brother, my trajectory went to premises cabling and physical infrastructure of copper and fiber during The Information Superhighway years when my introduction to fiber integration began and included buildout of large-scale local area network (LAN) projects in commercial, medical, municipal and educational facilities up and down the Mid-Atlantic region.

My career concluded as Senior Engineering Technician Photonics and Optical Fiber with one of the three top defense companies housed in the very halls and buildings of Bell Labs, Whippany New Jersey. This was a struggling undersea division after the divestiture of Bell and during the decline of Lucent with massive layoffs and a legacy workforce which refused, in many instances, to accept re-training - too many engineers, not enough bench monkeys. That left me as all but last-man-standing in the critical area of integration, which led me into the elite role of Optical Fiber and Photonics in Strange and Unusual Places: high reliability, low attenuation long haul/short haul fiber splice, integration, test and characterization of deep-sea unrecoverable devices, trans-continental cables, ship to shore and undersea connectivity as well as surveillance, navigation, guidance and command and control applications.

Team building and training, lab and equipment suite design, resurrection and implementation of legacy Bell standards and procedures, work instructions and best practices documentation (unauthored) created a workforce that drove innovation by companies like Fujikura, Sumitomo, JDS, Hewlett Packard and others in the black art of high strength splicing. My peer group are some of the best in the world at what we do and have achieved results considered by many to have been impossible. An elite group with global influence which includes myself, now one of the “Grey Beards”.

Skip to the present:

With a growing sense of urgency regarding cybersecurity and national security across all sectors of government and industry in America, coupled with a renewed economic revival and morale, my decision is to re-engage my field. This is my declaration of commitment to sharing the knowledge by creating a workforce development organization hereby (tentatively) known as S&UP (Strange and Unusual Places) whose purpose is to foster technicians working at the highest degree of standards in the photonics and fiber optics industry.

Together we can ensure that critical infrastructure is inherently robust (secure by design) wherever light is propagated from one point to another by optical fiber.

According to WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) there is no claim of origin for the art of high strength splicing of optical fiber; but Bell Labs in partnership with Corning Glass should rightfully be considered the center of the universe regarding all things fiber optics, now and for all time. And my tenure there and in defense represents the highest of all certifications.

So, there you go.

There is a critical shortage of competent technicians in the field right now. Good technicians working in defense, aerospace, communications etc. earn more than senior engineers. This is a lucrative occupation, and the need is growing exponentially.