The Surprising Life of Telecom


One needs to look no further than telecom to find a curious and dynamic industry. Despite its current economic depression, this industry is charged with making the Internet work and expand its capacity and services. Optical networks in particular are experiencing rapid changes in architecture and technology in response to carrier and customer demands. In architecture, mesh networks are poised against SONET rings, metro- and core- facilities are merging, and network transparency is close at hand. In technology, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are central to a new generation of optical switches, planar lightwave circuits are at high integration levels, Raman amplification is superceding erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, advanced optical monitoring methods have emerged, and new transmission formats are displacing simple on-off keyed signaling. This talk will describe some of these advances and suggest the need for a few more.