As the world prepares for the Internet of Things (IoT), Verizon claims the technology is already mainstream. In its latest report State of the Market: Internet of Things 2016, the US telecommunications giant asserts 2015 was the year IoT gained legitimacy, and that companies worldwide have IoT ‘squarely on their radar’.

According to the report, the worldwide IoT market is expected to reach US$1.3 trillion in 2019, double today’s figure. Meanwhile the installed base of IoT end points will nearly triple to reach 25.6 billion devices in the same period.

The last decade was first characterised by a series of breakthroughs in the development of optical device building blocks using silicon photonics followed by a spate of silicon photonics, start-up acquisitions. More recently, silicon photonics has entered a quiet period. But in May, Acacia Communications, a maker of coherent optical modules and a silicon photonics specialist, made headlines by raising $103.5 million in a successful initial public offering (IPO).

Forty years ago, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit would double approximately every two years – a prediction that proved astonishingly accurate.

Optical communications has progressed at a much slower pace. Historically electronic components have become about 70 per cent faster each year, while in contrast the capacity of optical transmission systems and their optical interfaces has only increased by about 20 per cent annually.