Redefining the optical industry and accelerating the construction of a global industry ecosystem for all-optical networks
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Redefining the optical industry and accelerating the construction of a global industry ecosystem for all-optical networks

Bill Wang Huawei.jpg

During ITU Telecom World 2019, Huawei hosted a forum on 5G + Gigabit, Connecting an Intelligent Future.

At this forum, Bill Wang (pictured), vice president of Huawei transmission and access product line, delivered a keynote speech: Intelligent OptiX Network Redefines the Optical Industry.

In his speech, he gave a comprehensive overview into the development trends in the optical industry, in addition to calling for the collaboration of the entire industry chain to build all-optical networks.

The world is entering a fully connected, intelligent era. Data centres, private lines, homes and campuses will make up the majority of connections in the future. The overall number of network connections will increase exponentially, with the total expected to rise to 800 million home broadband connections and 30 billion campus network connections.

Huawei firmly believes that optical connections will extend from every home to every room, from every office to every desktop, and from every factory to every machine. The global optical industry will keep expanding its business scope, and the overall market space will double over the next five years.

To support the expected 100-fold increase of fixed connections and deliver the ultimate service experience that is required in the gigabit network era, Huawei has released the Intelligent OptiX Network strategy. This strategy achieves ubiquitous optical connections by building an intelligent, simplified, ultra-broadband, and ubiquitous next-generation all-optical network.

The Intelligent OptiX Network covers four scenarios: all-optical transmission, all-optical access, all-optical data centre and all-optical campus. It is committed to bringing an ultimate service experience to every person, every home, and every organization and promoting the development of the global optical industry.

According to a white paper on the commercial application scenarios of the gigabit broadband network, released by China’s Broadband Development Alliance (BDA), there are many key application scenarios of gigabit broadband networks represented by 10G PON and Wifi 6: cloud VR, smart home, gaming, social networking, cloud desktop, enterprise cloudification, online education, telemedicine and smart manufacturing.

In the future, gigabit all-optical networks will become the foundation of connectivity and enable the prosperity of various industries.

In the gigabit fibre broadband field, Huawei has signed commercial contracts with more than 30 operators worldwide. What’s more, the number of global 10G PON optical line terminal (OLT) ports shipped exceeds 1.5 million, helping operators build leading gigabit all-optical access networks featuring intelligence and simplicity. For example, in north-east Europe, Huawei has helped multiple leading operators deploy six gigabit pre-commercial and commercial networks.

In the all-optical network era, all parties in the industry chain need to work together to build a future-oriented all-optical digital foundation.

Specifically, Wang calls for the industry chain to cooperate in the following four aspects:

  1. With the rapid development of 5G and gigabit services, optical fibres have become the fundamental network media for the future. Governments need to upgrade optical fiber projects to national strategies, build fibre cities and gigabit cities as key national infrastructure, and provide assurance in terms of funds, policies and collaboration to build a future-oriented digital economy foundation.

  2. In terms of innovating network construction business, fibre projects will drive huge investment. A country can coordinate the fund operation mechanism based on governmental subsidy funds, and guide operators and more potential investors to proactively participate in fibre construction through well-planned projects. For example, investment banks cooperate with ISPs, operators share resources and operators and electric power companies collaborate and share resources. This improves government investment efficiency and accelerates the construction of all-optical network infrastructure.

  3. As for standards and specifications, the FTT room/FTT desktop/FTT machine solution leads to numerous innovations. All parties in the industry need to collaborate to build a complete standards system, promote the industry standards of fibre engineering and cabling throughout all industries, and accelerate the deployment for fibre everywhere. During network construction, all parties in the industry also need to develop fibre connection detection standards to guarantee the standardisation and accuracy of all-optical connections, and provide high-quality core service experiences by developing experience and testing standards and systems oriented to various services (such as video, smart home, and high-speed download) and promoting experience testing and evaluation standards.

  4. An ecosystem alliance is vital for supporting the rapid development of innovative applications and ensuring ecosystem prosperity. The cloud VR service has become the fastest growing service of gigabit applications. A VR partner development plan can be established to standardise applications and improve the development quality of VR. In addition, a standards alliance oriented towards the gigabit era can be established to jointly build an end-to-end industry development system for gigabit fibre broadband scenarios, solutions, technical architecture standards, and test specifications, and standardize and accelerate the development of fixed broadband. For enterprise application scenarios, Huawei has established an all-optical network industry alliance to provide all-optical access solutions and rapid deployment solutions for enterprise applications.

Based on the joint promotion of the upstream and downstream partners across the industry chain, the all-optical network and 5G will work seamlessly together to enable the prosperity of all industries.

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