One of the largest events on optical communications in Europe, ECOC is a prestigious and long-standing conference and exhibition in this field. This year, the 44th edition of ECOC will be held in Rome, Italy.
There’s no denying that the last two decades have seen demand for bandwidth increasing – something that has provided much opportunity for growth for the networking market, but also presented it with some major challenges.
There has never been a better time to be in optical communications. Major communication trends impact everyone’s lives, such as UHD video, cloud services, big data and the move of mobile internet from LTE to 5G. They all reflect themselves in an evolving optical networking architecture and paradigm changes of how and where to use optical gear.
With 5G promising enhanced speeds, new services and new revenue-generating opportunities for service providers, the industry is in a race to unleash the 5G era.
Dr Danish Rafique offers a strategic blueprint for the optical networking sector
Anthony Clarkson examines the opportunities that could be presented to networks by ‘dark fibre’
Cloud data centres bring valuable services that many of us are progressively accepting into our daily lives – and in doing so, push optical communication’s limits. ‘The premier league cloud data centres have this tremendous appetite for more bandwidth,’ comments Andy Bechtolsheim, chief development officer at Arista Networks in Santa Clara, US. They expect their bandwidth needs to double every two years or so, he says.
Cost and compatibility can make a compelling case for pushing 100Gb/s bandwidth over a single optical channel, both as individual links and supporting 400Gb/s Ethernet, finds Andy Extance
Robin Mersh takes a look at how the industry is creating next-generation optical access fit for 5G
Technological advances to aid the increasing demand for bandwidth, on the path towards the terabit network, should lead to optical signals that are flexible and adaptive, like water, argues Dr Maxim Kuschnerov