Sizing up ECOC 2023’s top trends

Now that the ECOC 2023 show has ended, we thought we would do a show roundup that takes a quick look at the top storylines we saw during the show.

During the ECOC 2023, Lightwave saw several key trends:

Interoperability: Multi-vendor interoperability was a key theme during ECOC 2023. The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) and the Ethernet Forum held multi-vendor interoperability demonstrations. OIF’s interoperability demonstration included 39 companies demonstrating interoperability work in four areas - 400ZR+, Co-Packaging solutions, CEI-112G & CEI-224G, and CMIS implementations. With speeds ranging from 10GbE to 800GbE, the Ethernet Alliance’s demo showcased optical cabling and interconnects, switches, routers, transceivers, test and measurement equipment, and pluggable form factors such as OSFP, QSFP-DD, QSFP, and SFP. Finally, the Open XR Forum’s symposium featured the latest transceiver specifications, including thermal, mechanical form factor and electro-optical characteristics.

Scaling to 800G and beyond: The growing interest in cloud computing and cloud services, which has created new higher bandwidth demands, faster speed and lower latency performance, which means that high-speed switches are more widely used, such as 400G and 800G switches. Several optical component vendors showed off new platforms, including

Broadcom, Coherent, EFFECT Photonics, LESSENGERS, Lumentum and Source Photonics that data center providers can take advantage of to scale their networks/.

Mergers and Acquisitions: Teledyne LeCroy has bid to acquire Xena Networks ApS, adding Terabit Ethernet traffic generation to its testing portfolio. Copenhagen, Denmark-based Xena provides high-speed Terabit Ethernet validation, quality assurance, and production test solutions.

Testing: While there was no shortage of optical components and system vendors showing new wares that will satisfy growing bandwidth requirements for providers and data center operators, the need for testing has never been greater. At ECOC, testing providers Keysight, Viavi and Quantifi showed new testing innovations that will be useful with manufacturers and service providers.

Network visionaries shared industry views: ECOC 2023 also showcased the talents of industry visionaries: Polina Bayvel, Professor of Optical Communications & Networks, Optical Networks Group, UCL and Colin Lees, Chief Technology, and Information Officer, Openreach.

A lot was discussed at ECOC 2023, and we could not get to it all. It’s likely discussions on the topics above will continue.

You can also view our roundup thoughts on a special ECOC 2023 Friday Five video session.  

Please continue to tune into our website for daily optical and networking updates on optical industry trends as they unfold. 

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