Live from OFC/NFOEC

Each year at OFC/NFOEC, I attend a panel discussion that more or less covers the health of the optical communications business. At my first such session (2003), OFC was essentially the doom-and-gloom society. But even then, people were offering hope. They argued that the ever-increasing number and useage of cellular phones and Internet traffic would even tually translate into more bits over networks, which would lead to greater demand for networking equipment. Back then, few were talking about telco-TV. Today, video is the real reason that there are smiles all over the convention center.

40 Gbps networks, were, until this year, something you'd see only in a lab. On Tuesday, Verizon announced that its was installing a 40 Gbps fiber-optic link between New York and Washington. The company also announced that is was moving it's FiOS optical network access from BPON to GPON, which results in a fourfold increase in bandwidth to the home. The 40 Gbps fiber shows that as Verizon deploys more and faster fiber-to-the-premise, the carrier will need to upgrade its core and metro networks to handle increased demand. The May print issue of Test & Measurement World will feature a cover story on how engineers at Verizon Labs test the technology behing FiOS. Look for it online May 1.

The communications business is loaded with acronyms: DWDM, PON, TCP/IP, and FTTP to name a few. Today, I heard the longest one of all, AMOOFDM, at a technical session this morning. It stands for adaptively modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. Good luck remembering that one.

(See my other stories from OFC/NFOEC: Bandwidth demand has brought life to OFC and OFC technical sessions feature test and measurement.)