ECOC 2023: Network visionaries from BT and UCL touted new fiber, broadband innovations

This year’s ECOC show featured plenary speeches from the academic and service provider industry segments. The ECOC 2023 trade show’s plenary sessions offered insights into the evolution of optical networking and new ways to achieve more efficient next-generation fiber broadband network builds.

During the plenary sessions, optical and data networking visionaries shared their views:

· Polina Bayvel, Professor of Optical Communications and Networks, Optical Networks Group, UCL

· Colin Lees, CTO, and Information Officer for Openreach

Each leader talked about how new advances in fiber-based broadband, coherent technologies and software are changing how fiber networks are being built.

Tracing fiber’s roots

Bayvel discussed the roots of early fiber network trials and coherent optics, which traces to the 1970s at BT. Service providers are being leveraged to improve network reach and efficiency.

One of the visionaries behind coherent optics was former BT and University College London Professor John Midwinter, who mentored Bayvel and countless other engineers during his tenure. As the head of BT’s Optical Communications Laboratory, Midwinter and his team installed the world’s first optical fiber system between Martlesham and Kesgrave.

Polina Bayvel, Professor of Optical Communications and Networks, Optical Networks Group, UCL.

Midwinter was also an early advocate for coherent optics and single-mode fiber. Professor Midwinter’s research on single-mode fibers at British Telecom Research Laboratories led to his landmark work showing that single-mode fibers could transmit at much higher data rates than multimode fibers.

In 1983, Midwinter predicted in the service provider’s technology journal that that would be the year coherent optics would be taken seriously.

However, Bayvel pointed out that Midwinter’s vision would take several years to materialize. “Midwinter wrote in 1983 that that would be the year when coherent technology would be taken seriously,” Bayvel said. “He would have to wait 20 years for that prediction to come through.”

Openreach scales fiber broadband

By leveraging software and automation solutions to organize its fiber builds, Openreach continues to scale its fiber broadband rollout across the UK.

The provider has developed methods to connect 4 million homes annually and 30,000 a week.

Openreach’s CTO and Information Officer Colin Lees addressed how the telco will meet its goal to bring fiber-based broadband to 25 million homes by Christmas in 2026 by leveraging new optical innovations and automated processes to plan network builds.

However, he noted that getting fiber broadband to all its customers remains a key challenge. “There will be mass conversion from copper to fiber,” Lees said. “The bit that’s interesting for the UK telecom industry is what do you with the last 20%.”

He added, "It’s super expensive to build fiber out to the last 20, 10, and 5% of locations in the UK, but ultimately, the country will swing from a copper infrastructure to a fiber infrastructure over the next ten years.”

Another critical element in meeting its fiber deployment goals is the ability of Openreach’s technicians to process work orders digitally. When he started working on driving Openreach’s fiber deployments, the company was still relying on pencil and paper forms.

Lees touted how Openreach’s field technicians are equipped with tablet computers it built that can help its field technicians. “We have built our tablet-based solution that allows an engineer to hang a tablet on their neck, walk down the street, and they can drag and drop the design for the new fiber network, so it’s done instantaneously,” he said.