Webinar Series 2023: Watch on-demand - Optical Connections News

Optical Connections Webinar Series 2023

Catch up with our webinars from 2023 and watch on-demand.

Sustainability in Telecom Services and Technologies

Wednesday 29th March 2023 13:00 – 15:00 (BST) / 14:00 – 16:00 (CEST)

Fibre is probably the most eco-friendly means of enabling telecommunications in terms of the materials used and the manufacturing processes, particularly in comparison to copper. Components such as transceivers are becoming more power-efficient, meaning things like hyperscale data centres require less power. Also, many companies are revamping their production facilities to run on renewable energy in an effort to become a more sustainable industry.

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Speakers

Helen Xenos, Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing, Ciena
Anders Andrae, Assistant Chief Expert of Environmental Protection Technology, Huawei Technologies
Klaus Grobe, Senior Director Global Sustainability, Adtran
Jens Malmodin, Senior Specialist, Ericsson
Andrew Lord, Senior Manager of Optical Research, BT

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Abstracts:

Helen Xenos, Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing, Ciena

The surging demands of our hyperconnected world means businesses must continue to adapt and take action to transform their networks. Delivering a massive amount of bandwidth in an automated, flexible way – not just through the core of the network or across the ocean, but even closer to the network edge and the end customer – will continue to be a key imperative for network providers. At the same time, consumer demand for more capacity and bandwidth is resulting in greater energy use. Now more than ever, network providers are looking for ways to scale networks while using less equipment, reducing cost, space and energy use. In this webinar, Ciena’s Helen Xenos will explain how greener networks are made possible by continuous innovation in coherent optical technology, which supports exponential capacity increases while keeping power and energy consumption in check.

Greener Networks Made Possible by Coherent Innovations

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Dr. Anders. S.G. Andrae, Assistant Chief Expert of Environmental Protection Technology, Huawei Technologies

The data to be handled in the future will be very large and therefore the networks of the future have to possess certain characteristics. The foreseen trends are shown for key metrics and power saving technologies listed. Macro graphs placing fixed optical network production and use in a larger context are presented. The electricity savings potential under different scenarios are discussed. Policy and technology implications are proposed.

Future trends of Green All Optical Networks in a large context

Download slides: Future trends Green Optical and ICT Andrae 2023

Klaus Grobe, Senior Director Global Sustainability, ADVA

Green ICT – Challenges and Requirements
We give an overview on ICT environmental aspects, focusing on (wireline) network equipment. Relevant drivers and challenges related to ICT’s environmental footprint are identified. This includes the question of longevity vs. energy efficiency. This is complemented by a brief overview on legal and other relevant requirements related to (environmental) sustainability in ICT.

Jens Malmodin, Senior Specialist, Ericsson
The Energy and Carbon Footprint of ICT and Entertainment and Media (E&M)

The energy and carbon footprint of ICT have been constant since about 2010 while the footprints of E&M have decreased significantly as e.g., paper media has “moved online” and a whole range of consumer electronics have been reduced drastically as their functions are now included in smartphones. TVs have also become more energy efficient even as they have become larger.

Note the constant or decreasing footprints despite mobile subscriptions have increased from about 5 to more than 8 billion, broadband lines have more than doubled to 1.2 billion, Internet users have increased from about 2 to more than 5 billion people, and TV-households have increased 20%. At the same time from around 2010, network data traffic has increased about 20 times!

Aviation has typically been compared to ICT, but the carbon footprint of aviation was about 2 times larger in 2010 and about 3 times larger in 2019 before the pandemic. And then air travel is only used by about 10% of all people on the planet only a few times per year, while ICT is used by most people every day for hours.

How is this possible you may ask. Continuous improvements and miniaturization year by year, and sometimes larger steps due to brand new technologies, has not only led to lower energy consumption, but also less overall use of materials.

Andrew Lord, BT

An exclusive overview of the ECOC Conference 2023 from Andrew Lord of BT, with details of how you can get involved with the event this year.

Biographies:

Helen Xenos, Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing, Ciena

Helen Xenos is Senior Director of Portfolio Marketing at Ciena. She is responsible for introducing Ciena’s converged packet optical solutions and technologies to market, including Ciena’s industry leading WaveLogic high-capacity coherent optical solutions. She is a frequent blogger and speaker and enjoys rendering technical speak into the exciting implications it means for network providers. With >20 years in the telecommunications industry, Helen has held a variety of positions that have included product management for the optical and packet optical portfolio, customer program management, systems engineering and manufacturing test engineering. Helen joined Ciena from the Nortel Networks’ Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) acquisition.

Dr. Anders. S.G. Andrae, Assistant Chief Expert of Environmental Protection Technology, Huawei Technologies

Dr. Anders S.G. Andrae received the M.Sc. degree in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1997, and the Ph.D. degree in electronics production (microsystems packaging) from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2005. He worked for Ericsson with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) between 1997 and 2001. Between 2006 and 2008 he carried out post–doctoral studies at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan. His speciality is the application of sustainability assessment methodologies to ICT solutions from cradle–to–grave. Lately – apart from compliance, LCA and electricity footprints – he has focused mostly on Circular Economy-related topics in European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI) e.g. disassembly of server and data storage products, International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) e.g. Product Circularity Scoring, International Electrical Commission (IEC) e.g. avoided emissions, and academia. Since 2009 Dr. Andrae has been the Rapporteur and Editor of several ETSI and ITU-T Standards and Technical Reports about LCA and Circular Economy.
His current research interest is development and application of LCA to ICT to better understand footprint evolution, trade-offs, supply chains and business models as far as: data management, waste minimization, and green indicators. In ETSI standardization he helps define new LCA methodologies for ICT consumer and network infrastructure goods as well as product information formats. He has previously published three books and 40 peer–reviewed journal papers. Since 2008 Dr. Andrae has been with Huawei Technologies in Sweden now as Assistant Chief Expert of Environmental Protection Technology.

Klaus Grobe, Senior Director Global Sustainability, ADVA

Klaus Grobe, (IEEE M’94-SM’13) received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degrees in electrical engineering from Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany, in 1990 and 1998, respectively. Since 2016, he leads the Sustainability Department at ADVA Optical Networking.
Klaus is one of the main authors of Wavelength Division Multiplexing—A Practical Engineering Guide (Hoboken, NJ, Wiley, 2014) and authored and coauthored more than 100 technical publications as well as further book chapters on WDM and PON technologies. He holds 25 patents. Since 2021, he is chairing the Sustainability Working Group of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). His research interests include WDM energy efficiency and various ICT-related aspects of the circular economy.

Jens Malmodin, Senior Specialist, Ericsson

Jens Malmodin has 25 years of experience of energy efficient design, LCA, environmental assessments and environmental data reporting at Ericsson. He has published many papers and articles about LCA of ICT products, systems and services, including studies on the ICT sector level and how ICT can help society reduce its impact on the environment. Jens holds an MSc in material engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden.

Webinar 2: Why we need new architectures and support systems

Wednesday 21st June 2023 13:00 – 15:00 (BST) / 14:00 – 16:00 (CEST)

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Speakers:

Glenn Wellbrock, Verizon
Erik Pennings, Ensure
Johan Hjalmarsson, NetAdmin
Andrea Di Giglio, Telecom Italia

Moderators: Daryl Inniss, OFS – Karen Liu, Nubis Communications Inc

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Abstracts

Rural Broadband, The Final Chapter in FTTP!
Glenn Wellbrock, Verizon

The technology is available, but the business case is challenging hence the need for Government intervention / incentives. Hear how Verizon is approaching the unique nature of these rural builds by modifying existing architectures and support systems to serve both residential and business customers in remote communities!

How to stretch limits of PON networks by deploying novel splitting structures
Erik Pennings, Business Development Manager, Ensure

It is an important goal for many to create an increasingly interconnected world. High-speed internet has allowed us to stay connected, to work from home, and much more. Now that PON networks are going up in speed and/or reaching more of us, e.g. also in rural areas, there are situations where carriers can be short on fiber or run into power budget issues. For these situations, deploying novel splitting structures, such as asymmetric splitters, can offer great benefits. In the webinar, it will be detailed how these components can help and a number of interesting use cases will be discussed.

What should you consider when choosing an OSS/BSS for your fiber business?
Johan Hjalmarsson, NetAdmin

Johan discusses what to consider when choosing an OSS/BSS for a fibre business. He emphasizes the importance of OSS/BSS in the industry and highlights key factors to consider, including important processes and how fibre networks differ compared to other access technologies. Johan suggests that investing in the right tools from the beginning is crucial for building a successful fibre network.

Evolution of long-haul optical network decision support systems, adopting AI/ML
Andrea Di Giglio, Telecom Italia

The design of optical lightpaths is a complex task, involving different expertise. Often, an important margin is a part of the project both to face of the ageing of the system and to be robust to unpredictable characteristics of the components. For this reason, machine learning techniques, based on learning on set-up lightpaths can be useful for new design or for a quick recovery after a fault. Furthermore, the growing occurrences of hacker attacks on optical layer can be faced by a classification and root cause analysis based on AI/ML techniques.

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Biographies of speakers

Glenn Wellbrock is the director of optical transport network architecture, design and planning at Verizon, where he is responsible for the development and deployment of new technologies for both the metro and long haul transport infrastructure. Prior to this position, Wellbrock ran the advanced technology lab, established evaluation criteria and set engineering guidelines for all backbone transport equipment as well as various positions within network operations. In addition to his more than 20 years at Verizon (1984-2001 and 2004-present), Wellbrock was responsible for product architecture within the U.S. optical networks group at Marconi and product planning at Qplus Networks with a specific focus on developing alternative modulation techniques.

Erik Pennings is Business Development Director at Ensure, which he joined with the mission to help grow its premium connectivity business.
Prior to this, Erik worked for over 30 years in executive sales, marketing, and product management roles at companies such as Philips, JDSU (now Lumentum), CyOptics (now Broadcom), and Eudyna (now Sumitomo) as well as various business development consulting roles for 7 Pennies Consulting.
Throughout his career, Erik has been able to take a product from the initial idea, get it developed, introduce it to the market, and lead it to multimillion dollar revenues.
Erik says: “Our economy depends on people who come up with new inventions or ideas for innovative products or services and have the drive to bring them to the market. Having invented new technologies and having brought them successfully to the market myself, I very much enjoy working with entrepreneurs in order to help them reach their business goals”.
Erik has a MSc degree (Cum Laude) in Physcis, a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, and Executive MBA degrees from Simon Business School as well as Nyenrode Business University.

Johan Hjalmarsson has been working with OSS/BSS for almost 20 years and is keen to share his knowledge based on experience from fibre rollout in several countries across Europe. Johan works at Netadmin, which provides software purposefully built for the fibre journey – network operators starting, transitioning to, or operating a fibre network business.

Andrea Di Giglio (Dr.Eng) received a Dr. Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa (Italy) and the Engineering License degree from Scuola S. Anna. He joined Telecom Italia Lab (formerly CSELT), that is the Telecom Italia Group’s Company for study, research, experimentation, and qualification in the field of Telecommunications and Information Technology. The fields of his research are addressed toward Internet Security, Storage Area Networks and Optical Networks Architecture. He was involved in the architectural Work Package of the IST Project Nobel (Phase 1 and 2) “Next generation Optical networks for Broadband European Leadership” as Work Package leader and ICT STRONGEST as project coordinator. Dr. Di Giglio is the author of dozens of publications, including books, conference papers and workshops and it is currently the project coordinator of 5G-SOLUTIONS, flagship project for European Commission research for the Verticals’ usage of 5G Connectivity.