THE YEAR AHEAD
It’s that time again when we ask industry experts to predict the trends and developments we can expect to see in 2025. Infinera’s senior vice president, Marketing Rob Shore shared his thoughts, and Andreas Rüsseler , CMO at Reichle & De-Massari AG offered some findings from the company’s annual research into technology and market developments in Data Centre, FTTx, and LAN. THE YEAR AHEAD
Rob Shore: 2025 promises to be an exciting year for telecommunications networks. As artificial intelligence continues to challenge virtually all aspects of networking, solution providers will need to get creative to help network operators tackle these challenges. The biggest hurdle will be cost-effectively keeping up with the relentless pace of bandwidth growth, especially with the rapidly changing connectivity requirements resulting from data centres popping up in a wider variety of geographical locations due to limitations in real estate and power availability. To meet this challenge, 2025 will see a rush to embrace simplified network architectures and rapid adoption of lower-cost, power-efficient coherent pluggable optics. While these solutions will take some time to fully deploy, 2025 will see a slew of new solution announcements and new RFPs from network operators. One thing is certain – network operators cannot use traditional approaches to address these new challenges.
overcome their current fibre capacity limits. While bandwidth continues to grow at impressive rates, we have reached the point of diminishing returns on increasing capacity per fibre. As such, solution providers will need to get creative in finding ways to increase overall network capacity. Solutions will range from increasing the usable spectrum on the fibre to multi-fibre optical line systems. Both approaches pair nicely with coherent pluggable optics, which deliver improved cost and power efficiency while also being less spectrally efficient. Inside data centres, significant changes are on the horizon. Many traditional electrical connections will need to transition to optics as electrical connections run out of steam. This will give rise to new types of optical solutions optimised for intra-data centre applications, such as linear-drive pluggable optics (LPO), linear receive optics (LRO), and co-packaged optics (CPO). Moreover, due to the limitations on how much computing can be stuffed into a single data centre, 2025 will see an increase in multi-building campus-style data centre deployments. This will drive the need for new optical connectivity
solutions optimised around the 1-40 km distances between those facilities.
All in all, 2025 will be an interesting year as AI deployments ramp up, bringing new challenges and driving the need for increasingly innovative solutions in network design and optical connectivity. PUBLIC NETWORKS Andreas Rüsseler: Driven by growing demand for high-speed, low-latency internet, public networks are undergoing rapid transformation. The rise of IoT devices, AR/VR, remote working, gaming, and video streaming has significantly increased data traffic and reliance on robust fibre infrastructure. Fibre expansion, especially in urban areas, is essential to this. Connectivity disparities in rural areas persist and require innovative and cost-effective solutions. Advanced technologies, such as Passive Optical Networks (PON), Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM), and innovations like Fibre to the Room (FTTR) and Fibre to the Antenna (FTTA), are pivotal in supporting the demand. We’re seeing development in rural areas using robust fibre optic technologies, suitable for outdoor use, as well as expansion of fixed wireless transmission in rural areas.
Additionally in 2025, network operators will be searching for new innovations to
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INDUSTRY FOCUS 2024/2025
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