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.

Click to read more ...

FSAN adds WDM for next-generation PON standard

The Full Service Access Network (FSAN) group has chosen wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to complement PON's traditional time-sharing scheme for the NG-PON2 next-generation standard. 

"The technology choice allows us to have a single platform supporting both business and residential services"

Vincent O'Byrne, Verizon

Click to read more ...

FSAN close to choosing the next generation of PON

Briefing: Next-gen PON

Part 1: NG-PON2

The next-generation passive optical network (PON) will mark a departure from existing PON technologies. Some operators want systems based on the emerging standard for deployment by 2015. 

“One of the goals in FSAN is to converge on one solution that can serve all the markets"

Derek Nesset, co-chair of FSAN's NGPON task group 

Click to read more ...