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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Nokia picks Infinera to boost its optical networking arm

Nokia has announced its intention to buy optical networking specialist Infinera for $2.3 billion. 

The motivation for the Infinera acquisition is scale, said Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark, during an analyst call detailing the announcement. 

Jimmy Yu, Dell'Oro Group

Optical networking is how communications service providers and hyperscalers cope with the exponential traffic growth. 

Continual innovation is required to reduce the cost and power consumed to transport such traffic. For a systems vendor, having scale helps meet these aims.

Optical networking wasn't always central to Nokia's strategy. In 2013, Nokia sold its optical networking arm to Marlin Equity Partners, which became Coriant.

Now, Nokia wants to be a leading optical networking vendor by acquiring Infinera, a company that bought Coriant in 2018.   

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Cloud and AI: Opportunities that must be grabbed

The founder of Cloud Light, Dennis Tong, talks about the company, how its sale to Lumentum came about, and the promise of cloud and AI markets for optics.

For Dennis Tong (pictured), Hong Kong is a unique place that has a perfect blend of the East and West.

Tong, the founder and CEO of optical module specialist Cloud Light, should know. The company is headquartered in Hong Kong and has R&D offices in Hong Kong and Taipei, Taiwan. Cloud Light also has manufacturing sites in Asia: in the Chinese city of Dongguan—two hours by car north of Hong Kong—and in the Philippines.

Now, Cloud Light is part of Lumentum. The U.S. photonics firm bought the optical module maker for $750 million in November 2023.

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Broadcom's Thor 2 looks to hammer top spot in AI NICs

Broadcom has announced the availability of network interface cards (NICs) for large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) computers. 

Jas Tremblay

The NIC cards are using Broadcom's Thor 2 chip which started sampling in 2023 and is now in volume production.

Jas Tremblay, vice president and general manager of the data center solutions group at Broadcom, says the Thor 2 is the industry's first 400 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) NIC device to be implemented in a 5nm CMOS process.  

"It [the design] gives customers choices and freedom when they're building their AI systems such that they can use different NICs with different [Ethernet] switches," says Tremblay.

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Has the era of co-packaged optics finally arrived?

Part 3: Co-packaged optics: Ayar Labs CEO interview

Mark Wade, newly appointed CEO of Ayar Labs, shares what his new role entails and why, after a decade-long journey, co-packaged optics' time has come.

Ayar Labs' CEO, Mark Wade

Mark Wade, the recently appointed CEO of Ayar Labs, says his new role feels strangely familiar. Wade finds himself revisiting tasks he performed in the early days of the start-up that he helped co-found. 

“In the first two years, I would do external-facing stuff during the day and then start working on our chips from 5 PM to midnight,” says Wade, who until last year was the company’s chief technology officer (CTO).  

More practically, says Wade, he has spent much of the first months since becoming CEO living out of a suitcase and meeting with customers, investors, and shareholders. 

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OFC 2024 industry reflections: Final part

In the final part, Chris Cole, Ranovus' Hojjat Salemi, and Infinera's Harald Bock share their thoughts about the revent OFC show. 

Chris Cole, Consultant

OFC and optics were back with a vengeance. The high level of excitement and participation in the technical and exhibit programmes was fueled by artifical intelligence/ machine learning (AI/ML). To moderate this exuberance, a few reality checks are offered.

During the Optica Executive Forum, held on the Monday, one of the panels was with optics industry CEOs. They were asked if AI/ML is a bubble, and all five said no. They are right that there is a real, dramatic increase in optics demand driven by AI/ML, with solid projections showing exponential growth.

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OFC 2024 industry reflections: Part 4

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. This penultimate part includes the thoughts of Cisco’s Ron Horan, Coherent’s Dr. Sanjai Parthasarathi, and Adtran’s Jörg-Peter Elbers.

Ron Horan, Vice President Product Management, Client Optics Group, Cisco   

Several years ago, no one could have predicted how extensive the network infrastructure required to support artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) back-end networks in data centres would be. This year's OFC answered that question. In a word, immense.

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