It's more than possible that other companies are close or closer than POET.

Do you honestly believe that GHF? You believe it's more than possible (probable) that another company has been working on a similar project to POET and is ahead of us and nobody on this forum or within the company have picked up on it? 

This board is renowned for digging out information and disseminating it. We've been doing it for years now and not a whiff that another company has a similar GaAs tech, i.e. A purely monolithic solution to photonic integration. Surely something like a patent or paper or article, would have been discovered by an absessive coterie such as this one?

Of course it cannot be ruled out that a deep pocketed, large company has found an alternative route to the end game. But I doubt they will be registering an interest in this tender process. 

Perhaps I'm being extremely naive?? For sure my track record when it comes to the poet development phase, would indicate I am prone to that particular problem.