Gazettabyte has been asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the OFC 2026 conference held in Los Angeles in March. In the penultimate post (Part 3), Nokia’s David Heard, Vipul Bhatt of Coherent, and Adtran’s Jörg Peter-Elbers share their thoughts.
David Heard, President Network Infrastructure, Nokia
The biggest OFC takeaway was the sheer scale of growth across networks, coupled with an accelerating diversification of connectivity applications.
The industry is experiencing unprecedented demand driven by AI, cloud, and next-generation digital infrastructure, and this is driving innovation in optical technologies and architectures – primarily for high-capacity, power-efficient solutions that can be supplied in substantial volumes.
Against this backdrop, what also stood out for me is the growing importance of co-innovation efforts with customers and partners. This was reflected in the positive reception of the vision we announced for solutions optimised for our customers’ applications. This is a strategic priority for Nokia, as is staying disciplined in focussing capital on areas where Nokia has a clear technology advantage and can differentiate.
This creates significant opportunity across the ecosystem, from AI cloud operators and data centre providers to service providers and infrastructure vendors.
From my conversations with customers, it is clear that the ability to bring expertise across fixed, IP, and optical domains creates real value as AI reshapes traffic demands and patterns across every layer of the network.
In a supply-constrained environment, that value extends to expertise in critical material sciences and having your own semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging, which increasingly matter for scale and resilience.
Demand for 800-gigabit coherent pluggables continues to outpace even aggressive forecasts, with industry volumes expected to exceed three million units annually by 2030.
There is also strong momentum around 1.6-terabit coherent technologies. Multiple approaches are under discussion, including subcarrier-based implementations. These aim to extend reach for long-haul transmission.
Another noteworthy OFC theme is the growing focus on multi-rail line systems. The industry is prioritising higher amplification density and greater service capacity to maximise infrastructure footprint, highlighting the criticality of efficiency and density as networks scale. One takeaway from OFC was how rising volumes and growing application diversity are changing what scale and innovation mean for the industry.
Customers no longer want one-size-fits-all architectures. They seek solutions tailored to specific use cases, such as AI-driven data centre interconnect, metro, or long-haul transport. They demand suppliers meet capacity requirements that, in some cases, exceed historical norms by an order of magnitude.
There was also significant industry interest in the new XPO (eXtra-dense Pluggable Optics) module, which is emerging as a compelling alternative to co-packaged optics (CPO) and near-packaged optics (NPO).
XPO has the potential to address some of the engineering and manufacturability challenges that have slowed the adoption of those approaches.
Hollow-core fibre continues to generate interest, especially for its latency benefits. However, it remains several years from large-scale deployment. Challenges around manufacturing cost, operational readiness, and ecosystem maturity still need to be addressed.ugh.
What struck me at the show wasn’t a single “new” idea, but rather how quickly the industry has aligned around a few non-negotiables: delivering new levels of scale and efficiency as AI drives unprecedented demand, addressing the resulting power consumption challenges, and translating cutting-edge innovation into real-world business purpose.
Vipul Bhatt, Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Coherent
What stood out at OFC was not just that optical networking continues to grow. By now, that is expected. Instead, it was the breadth of the expansion on display. I saw an industry widening across technologies, architectures, companies, and alliances.
First, the development envelope is broadening. We saw multiple 400-gigabit demonstrations even as 200 gigabit is still ramping. There was a diverse set of form factors and device platforms. For example, VCSELs (vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers), silicon photonics, EMLs (externally modulated lasers), and indium phosphide Mach-Zehnder modulators were all represented.
Second, innovation is unfolding across all three AI network domains. Optics in scale-up came into much sharper focus. Multi-rail approaches for scale-across gained visibility. The industry also showed steady progress in scale-out.
Third, there are newer players.
In optical circuit switching alone, there are more than a dozen entrants.
Lastly, the industry has formed several new alliances. These include three major multi-source agreements — XPO, Open CPX (co-packaged ‘x’), and Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) — a telling sign that collaboration is scaling alongside the technology.
When an industry is expanding on multiple fronts, it does not just get bigger. It becomes more generative. More entrepreneurial bets are placed, more unconventional ideas are tested, and more consequential innovations emerge.
The rate of useful surprise increases. In the mid-1980s, Ethernet went through such an expansion. OFC 2026 suggests that optics for AI is entering a moment like this. It was a great time to be alive then, as it is now.
Jörg Peter-Elbers, Vice President, Advanced Technology, Standards and IPR at Adtran
OFC underscored how quickly optical networking is accelerating under massive AI infrastructure investments. Technology developments that long sat on the industry roadmap are now moving rapidly towards deployment.
AI model training, advanced reasoning, and increasingly autonomous AI agents are driving capacity demand at a pace that makes higher interface speeds and tighter electro‑photonic integration unavoidable.
As the industry moves from 800 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) to 1.6 terabit-per-second (Tbps), power efficiency and manufacturability have become as critical as reliability and performance. This shift creates opportunities for VCSEL‑based scale‑out architectures, as well as innovative coherent scale‑across solutions that extend from data centre interconnect into metro and regional networks.
Meanwhile, network operations are being reshaped by agentic AI.
AI systems that can analyse, reason, and act promise a more intuitive operating model than traditional network management approaches. Engineers will increasingly interact with their networks using natural language, enabling real‑time, closed‑loop responses across open and disaggregated optical infrastructures.
Hollow‑core fibre is another technology crossing an important threshold. As practical installation challenges are addressed and manufacturing capabilities expand through industry partnerships, it is now approaching deployment at a meaningful scale. Its combination of ultra‑low latency, reduced nonlinear effects, and favourable dispersion characteristics paves the way for a new generation of high‑capacity dense WDM systems, enabling fewer, higher‑power amplifiers to efficiently extend reach and capacity.
Lastly, the sky is no longer the limit for optical networking. Coherent optical technologies originally developed for terrestrial networks are being adapted for space‑based systems, enabling resilient, high‑capacity connectivity where fibre is unavailable—or where additional physical diversity is required.
Emerging standards are enabling interoperability across ground, airborne, and space assets, allowing optical networks to seamlessly extend to in‑orbit satellite constellations.
The broader picture is clear. With hyperscalers investing at unprecedented levels in AI infrastructure, scale itself has become the dominant driver of innovation. Optical communications and networking have never been more exciting.