Communication is an essential part of every industry, and optical networking is rapidly emerging at the forefront of the communications race. As technology continues to evolve every day, new players are entering the market in vast numbers. This has heated the debate between technology lovers, people focusing on simplicity, and operational aspects. In recent years, a lot of telecom operators and enterprise networks have turned their attention towards optical network disaggregation. A majority of these prefer the model of disaggregating the entire optical line system from terminals or optics.
One of the primary benefits of this model is that network disaggregation decouples innovation cycles. With improvement on the terminal side being much faster than the photonic layer, disaggregation allows network providers to leverage the latest innovation. However, this comes at the cost of complexity with system integration, management, and orchestration. This needs to be carefully considered, especially by network operators who lack the required expertise and resources available in-house.
As the world prepares for the complete roll-out of 5G, experts predict the technology will be a game-changing development that shall have an impact on every facet of life. Besides, last-mile (FTTx) technology and infrastructure will continue to evolve to support this technology, including new business models to share infrastructure costs such as neutral hosting and spectrum sharing. The integration of powerful silicon chips into compact optical transceiver will help simplify construction in a manner that reduces overall power consumption and increases transmission capacity. At high speeds like never before, integrated silicon optics are designed for both data center applications and possible 5G wireless support.
As the world of optical networking continues to transform rapidly, we have put together a list of the most promising companies in the industry to help our readers identify the one that best fulfills their needs. We present to you Enterprise Networking Magazine’s 'Top 10 Optical Networking Companies - 2020.'
