ECOC 2024 industry reflections - Final Part

In the final part, industry figures share their thoughts after attending the recent 50th-anniversary ECOC show in Frankfurt. Contributions are from Adtran’s Jörg-Peter Elbers, Lightwave Logic’s Michael Lebby, and Heavy Reading’s Sterling Perrin.

ECOC exhibition floor

Jörg-Peter Elbers, senior vice presendent, advanced technology, standards and IPR, Adtran, and a General Chair at this year’s ECOC.

ECOC celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. It was great to see scientists, engineers, and industry leaders from all around the globe at a vibrant gathering in Frankfurt.

ECOC dates to September 1975 when the inaugural event – dubbed the “European Conference on Optical Fiber Technology” - was held in London. In the early days, the focus was on megabit-per-second transmission for telephony applications. Now, we are advancing to petabit-per-second speeds to meet AI and cloud services demands. 

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Will AI spur revenue growth for the telcos?

• A global AI survey sponsored by Ciena highlights industry optimism 
• The telcos have unique networking assets that can serve users of AI.
• Much is still to play out and telcos have a history of missed opportunities.

The leading communications service providers have been on a decade-long journey to transform their networks and grow their revenues.

Jürgen Hatheier.

To the list of technologies the operators have been embracing can now be added artificial intelligence (AI). 

AI is a powerful tool for improving their business efficiency. The technology is also a revenue opportunity and service providers are studying how AI traffic will impact their networks. 

"This is the single biggest question that everyone in this industry is struggling with," says Jürgen Hatheier. "How can the service providers exploit the technology to grow revenues?"

However, some question whether AI will be an telecom opportunity.

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OFC 2024 industry reflections: Part 2

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. Here are the thoughts from Ciena, Celestial AI and Heavy Reading.

Dino DiPerna, Senior Vice President, Global Research and Development at Ciena.

Power efficiency was a key theme at OFC this year. Although it has been a prevalent topic for some time, it stood out more than usual at OFC 2024 as the industry strives to make further improvements.

There was a vast array of presentations focused on power efficiency gains and technological advancements, with sessions highlighting picojoule-per-bit (pJ/b) requirements, high-speed interconnect evolution including co-packaged optics (CPO), linear pluggable optics (LPO), and linear retimer optics (LRO), as well as new materials like thin-film lithium niobate, coherent transceiver evolution, and liquid cooling.

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Infinera buying Coriant will bring welcome consolidation

Infinera is to purchase privately-held Coriant for $430 million. The deal will effectively double Infinera’s revenues, add 100 new customers and expand the systems vendor’s product portfolio.

Infinera's CEO, Tom FallonBut industry analysts, while welcoming the consolidation among optical systems suppliers, highlight the challenges Infinera faces making the Coriant acquisition a success.   

“The low price reflects that this isn't the best asset on the market,” says Sterling Perrin, principal analyst, optical networking and transport at Heavy Reading. “They are buying $1 of revenue for 50 cents; the price reflects the challenges.”   

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Ciena shops for photonic technology for line-side edge

Briefing: DWDM developments

Part 3: Acquisitions and silicon photonics

Ciena is to acquire the high-speed photonics components division of Teraxion for $32 million. The deal includes 35 employees and Teraxion’s indium phosphide and silicon photonics technologies. The systems vendor is making the acquisition to benefit its coherent-based packet-optical transmission systems in metro and long-haul networks.

Sterling Perrin

“Historically Ciena has been a step ahead of others in introducing new coherent capabilities to the market,” says Ron Kline, principal analyst, intelligent networks at market research company, Ovum. “The technology is critical to own if they want to maintain their edge.”

“Bringing in-house not everything, just piece parts, are becoming differentiators,” says Sterling Perrin, senior analyst at Heavy Reading.    

Ciena designs its own WaveLogic coherent DSP-ASICs but buys its optical components. Having its own photonics design team with expertise in indium-phosphide and silicon photonics will allow Ciena to develop complete line-side systems, optimising the photonics and electronics to benefit system performance.

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Books in 2015 - Final Part

The final part of what industry figures have been reading in 2015 - Part 3 of 3

Sterling Perring, senior analyst, Heavy Reading  

My ambitions to read far exceed my actual reading output, and because I have such a backlog of books on my reading list, I generally don’t read the latest.

Source: The Age of Spiritual Machines

I have long been fascinated by a graphic from futurist Ray Kurweil which depicts the exponential growth of computing and plots it against living intelligence. The graphic is from Kurzweil’s 1999 book on artificial intelligence The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, which I read in 2015.

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P-OTS 2.0: 60s interview with Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin

Heavy Reading has surveyed over 100 operators worldwide about their packet optical transport plans. Sterling Perrin, senior analyst at Heavy Reading, talks about the findings.

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