Nice work as usual ITTR. Ultimately Juniper and others will not be left out in the cold. So these word wide telecom customers that the Senior optoelectronic researcher at DenseLight is making reference to will expand in my opinion from the original list that you found.
The question that this statement generates is: POET is using DL to design lasers etc. and other active devices for insertion into the optical engines they are building for POET customers. It was not certain whether POET would be required to pay DL NRE to support this work. If we take the DL researchers statement at face value it suggests that DL is being paid directly by these customers kind of like a sub-contractor would. This makes sense to me as POET can focus on platform design and companies like DL can build a library of “off the shelf” components to supply those needs. Which is I think the ultimately goal for both DL and POET to supply the increasing needs for telecom (400G etc.).
As he stated: Develop advanced InP-based products (FP, DFB, gain chip and SOA) to meet performance, reliability, manufacturability, cost and schedule requirements.
It is also interesting that when the DL sale was being pitched it was all about supplying China’s needs in sensing to modernize manufacturing and to expand into telecom as capacity becomes available (or something like that). The drive to expand DL’s operation to meet POETs needs beyond China’s borders maybe materializing as a more focused goal for DL.