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Day 1: WDM Cannes re-emerges in Nice

By Mark Lum, independent telecoms consultant

After a decade in Cannes, IIR’s annual WDM conference has moved just along the Cote d’Azur to Nice and its Baie des Anges. We are meeting at the Acropolis — the huge and rather garish alien building beamed down next to Nice Vieux Ville. We are all finding our feet in a new venue, but we have a sun terrace opening from the airy exhibition area and it’s a refreshing change from the subterranean depths of the Hilton in Cannes. Welcome to my 2009 conference diary!

We open with a keynote from Orange UK. We have all heard the challenges faced by mobile operators as their rapidly-growing HSPA/3G internet traffic stresses all parts of the network, from backhaul to the converged IP/MPLS core. Orange has adopted an optical offload strategy to deal with the latter, where high-speed internet traffic is logically routed at the edge onto express optical paths, directly to the internet peering point. With this optimisation, internet traffic never traverses the IP/MPLS core and avoids the whole capacity/scale/cost/revenue dilemma.

Optical bypass has been much talked about, often on a per-node basis, but it seems to me that this type of network-wide optimisation — with a rapid payback — holds much future promise. If we are indeed to have on-demand video delivered to consumers on mobile devices or 3G-PCs, mobile (and fixed) operators need to get with the program, if they expect to be profitable.

On the conference agenda, I’m looking forward to the “100G showcase” this afternoon, where 6 vendors who have supported operator field trials will present their systems. I’ll have more on this session in a special 100G diary. Coming up tomorrow is the “Future of Photonics Networks” session, led by FibreSystems Europe and including a focus on photonic integration. Also we have the OIF’s interoperability demonstration, more on this too. And of course this evening, WDM’s signature cocktail reception on the sun terrace to catch up with both new and long-standing industry colleagues.

Aside from the headline 100G linespeeds, all-optical technology continues its advancement: fully tunable sources, optical path tracing, fast adaptable transponders, dynamic PMD compensation, advanced modulation, photonic restoration, digital post-processing — and more. A host of technologies and techniques attempt to wrestle a badly-behaved analogue optical channel into submission, so operators can run high-availability digital services over it. But as Belgacom ICS asks: “When will this be commercially available?” which I interpret as asking “Great science projects, but when will it be affordable?” To me, all-optical still seems a very specialised type of network, when perhaps we should be figuring out how to get some economy of scale into optical network operations.

IP—optical integration was also examined by Telefonica International Wholesale. Its objective is to leverage next-gen optical functions to reduce total capex (optical+IP) of IP networks — IP hardware is taking an increasing proportion of IP product costs and this needs to be rebalanced for scalability. Music to an optical conference’s collective ears! For an operator, such an approach requires a high co-ordination between design, operations and maintenance teams. Even simple strategies such as protection at the optical layer, rather than the IP layer, result in substantial capex savings. In common with Orange, a careful analysis of traffic flow is the starting point, allowing a rational removal of intermediate nodes.

So a very interesting first morning. I’m off to look around the vendor exhibition area; WDM has proper exhibition-style booths this year, not just tabletops. It’s all change here, and perhaps also a time to consider changes in the next decade of optical networking.

Tune in to WDM Nice tomorrow!Visit the event here www.optical-transmission.com/wdm

Posted by Pauline Rigby on June 23, 2009 5:53 PM | Permalink