LightCounting ECOC News: Reducing network equipment costs is still a top priority. News on September 29 (Shuiyi) Recently, the European Optical Fiber Communications Exhibition (ECOC) was held in Basel, Switzerland. LightCounting released a report on its experiences during the ECOC period. In his speech, Andrew Lord of British Telecom (BT) first raised a topic that service providers have been focusing on for the past 20 years: how to keep up with growing network traffic when revenue and capital expenditure budgets have not increased. The only option is to reduce the cost of network equipment, but this is becoming more challenging every year. Suppliers of optical transmission equipment continue to increase data rates: from 100G a few years ago to 800G now, the next step is 1.2T and 1.6T systems. Lighting up L-band is an option, but service providers are concerned about whether it will work as well as C-band and whether all the components will be available at the right price. Another option is to light up new fiber and deploy more fiber optic cables, which are the most expensive parts of network upgrades. L-band is new to European service providers, but it has been used in Japan for 20 years and is also used by many subsea and DCI systems. Colt reported that earlier this year they lit up L-band on their network in Europe, which is a very positive sign. So it's only a matter of time before other European service providers will start using it as well, rather than deploying new fiber. Each new DWDM channel requires additional costs, but equipment suppliers are committed to continuing to reduce the cost of optical transmission (calculated in US dollars/Gbps, the same below). For example, if the cost of 1.6T optical components in the future is the same as that of current 800G, the cost will drop by 50%. Edward Echeverry of Telefonica shared their plan to share DWDM channels among several service providers in a network. This will of course increase the complexity of network management, but it will help spread the costs. Clearly, the cost of lighting new fiber optics is a significant burden. Service providers welcome any new technology that promises to reduce costs. Pluggable DWDM optical devices, from 100/200G DCO a few years ago to 400ZR/ZR+ now, are an attractive option that can introduce more open transmission solutions, and more competition helps reduce costs. Another promise of 400ZR/ZR+ is that these modules can be plugged directly into the core router, eliminating the need for separate DWDM transmission equipment. Earlier this year, Colt also reported the first deployment of 400ZR/ZR+ on routers, but other operators have a number of concerns about this strategy, one of which is how to manage DWDM optics on routers, as current systems use different software to manage the IP and optical network layers. Nokia recently demonstrated a new solution that provides cross-layer network management to support 400ZR/ZR+ on routers