The ON2020 panel session at OFC this year, titled “Industry Visions for a Converged Optical Networking Roadmap,” provided a fascinating insight into the challenges faced by a diverse set of network operators and highlighted some of the technologies that will be required in future optical networks.
Some key themes were shared by the various operator executive presenters, including: growing bandwidth demands driven by cloud services, network cloud applications, autonomous vehicles, IoT and 5G wireless; the need for massively parallel networks and low-latency connections; and requirements for modular building blocks supported by an open ecosystem.