Speakers from 26 different companies and organisations – including Intel, Huawei, Cisco, Ericsson and Viavi – will take to the stage as part of a bumper schedule that will cover topics as diverse as fibre access, optical network agility, the role of cloud and data centres and photonic integration.

Sponsored by Inphi, the Market Focus is a key part of the ECOC Exhibition, which has reached a sell-out with more than 300 companies exhibiting. Last year’s Market Focus sessions attracted more than 3,000 visitors and feature insights fromleading industry professionals from across the globe, including senior executives and industry analysts.

“This year’s Market Focus agenda is a real mixture of operators, vendors and industry experts, and we are delighted withthe quality and breadth of presentations that will be on show,” said Beverley Lucas, Event Director for Nexus Media Events Ltd. “With the industry currently at a crucial juncture and new technologies enabled by optical communications set to play a key role in the development of 5G and the Internet of Things, this year’s Market Focus agenda reflects the developments in a fast-changing market.”

This year’s agenda kicks off with an opening session on fibre access - with presentations from Ericsson, Source Photonics, FTTH Council Europe, Finisar and Hexatronic – followed by Huawei, Delta Group, EXFO and Lumentum speaking onoptical network agility and packet optical transport in the afternoon.

Tuesday’s keynotes will centre on the role of the data centre, with keynotes from Microsoft, Ovum, Intel, Juniper Networksand Arista Networks in the morning session and Cignal AI, Acacia Communications, Molex, the Ethernet Alliance and Viavi Solutions post-lunch.

The final day will see Cisco, Inphi and Huawei revisit network agility and access, with the Market Focus concluding on Wednesday afternoon with presentations on photonic integration and digital silicon photonics from Light Counting, Sicoya, II-VI Photonics, NeoPhotonics and Lightwave Logic.

The topics and speakers for this year’s Market Focus have been decided by the ECOC Exhibition Advisory Panel, which includes global representatives from across the optical communications space such as independent industry bodies, analyst groups, system vendors, telecom operators and component manufacturers.