ECOC reflections: final part

Gazettabyte asked several attendees at the recent ECOC show, held in Cannes, to comment on key developments and trends they noted, as well as the issues they will track in the coming year. 

Dr. Ioannis Tomkos, Fellow of OSA & Fellow of IET, Athens Information Technology Center (AIT)

With ECOC 2014 celebrating its 40th anniversary, the technical programme committee did its best to mark the occasion. For example, at the anniversary symposium, notable speakers presented the history of optical communications. Actual breakthroughs discussed during the conference sessions were limited, however.

Ioannis Tomkos

It appears that after 2008 to 2012, a period of significant advancements, the industry is now more mainstream, and significant shifts in technologies are limited. It is clear that the original focus four decades ago on novel photonics technologies is long gone. Instead, there is more and more of a focus on high-speed electronics, signal processing algorithms, and networking. These have little to do with photonics even if they greatly improve the overall efficient operation of optical communication systems and networks.

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ECOC 2014: Industry reflections on the show

Gazettabyte asked several attendees at the recent ECOC show, held in Cannes, to comment on key developments and trends they noted, as well as the issues they will track in the coming year. 

Daryl Inniss, practice leader, components at market research firm, Ovum

 It took a while to unwrap what happened at ECOC 2014. There was no one defining event or moment that was the highlight of the conference.

The location was certainly beautiful and the weather lovely. Yet I felt the participants were engaged with critical technical and business issues, given how competitive the market has become.

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Finisar adds silicon photonics to its technology toolkit

• Finisar revealed its in-house silicon photonics design capability at ECOC
• The company also showed its latest ROADM technologies: a dual wavelength-selective switch and a high-resolution optical channel monitor.
• Also shown was an optical amplifier that spans 400km fibre links 

These two complementary technologies [VCSELs and silicon photonics] work well together as we think about the next-generation Ethernet applications.

Rafik Ward

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Oclaro demonstrates flexible rate coherent pluggable module

• The CFP2 coherent optical module operates at 100 and 200 Gig
• Samples are already with customers, with general availability in the first half of 2015
• Oclaro to also make more CFP2 100GBASE-LR4 products

The CFP2 is not just used in metro/ regional networks but also in long-haul applications

Robert Blum

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Module makers rush to fill the 100 Gig mid-reach void

You may give little thought as to how your Facebook page is constructed each time you log in, or the data centre ramifications when you access Gmail. But for the internet giants, what is clear is that they need cheaper, higher-speed optical links to connect their equipment that match the growing size of their hyper-scale data centres. 

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