European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication 2026

  2. Programme
  3. Symposia

Symposia

Winning Interconnects for AI: Scale-Up & Scale-Out Technology Paths
Monday, September 21, 14:00–15:30, coffee break, 16:00–17:30

AI/ML growth is driving a surge in interconnect bandwidth as models and datasets scale and workloads become increasingly token-centric—reshaping system design. Modern systems have converged on a two-tier hierarchy: scale-up fabrics that tightly couple XPU, memory, and switching into a coherent “virtual XPU,” and scale-out networks that connect many scale-up fabrics across the data centre.

Organisers: Daniel Kuchta (Nvidia), Lidia Galdino (Corning), Connie Chang-Hasnain (Berxel), Julie Raulin (Adtran), Paul Gunning (British Telecom)
Coming soon…

AI for 6G and 6G for AI
Tuesday, September 22, 14:00–15:30, coffee break, 16:00–17:30

The use of AI in society is exploding and quickly changing how businesses and public functions operate. It’s speculated that Generative AI could drive a 10x traffic growth in 6G mobile networks. This workshop will outline the background of such predictions.

Organisers: Stefan Dahlfort (Ericsson), Oskars Ozolinš (RISE/RTU), Philippe Chanclou (Orange)
Coming soon…

ITU-T ION 2030: Architectures and Standards of Optical Networks for the AI Era
Wednesday, September 23, 9:00–10:30, coffee break, 11:00–12:30

AI workloads, IMT-2030 (6G) transport and hyperscale data-centre optics are converging, forcing networks toward 800G/1.6T interfaces, microsecond-level synchronization, deterministic latency, and stringent energy budgets.

Organisers: Raul Muñoz (CTTC), Xiang Liu (Huawei), Glenn Parsons (Ericsson)
The symposium will consist of two 90 minute sessions. Each session features six 10 minute presentations and includes a 30 minute panel discussion.

Session I (Mobile and Broadband Optical Access in the AI era)
  • Opening of the ITU-T ION-2030 symposium, Raul Muñoz (CTTC) and Xiang Liu (Huawei)
  • Introduction of the ITU-T ION-2030 framework, Glenn Parsons (Chair of ITU-T SG15, Ericsson)
  1. Optics for radio access towards 6G: challenges and opportunities, Fabio Cavaliere, Ericsson, Italy
  2. Status and evolution of optical access broadband, Philippe Chanclou, Orange, France
  3. Fiber sensing and mobile fronthaul in metro/access optical networks, Antionio Napoli, Nokia, Germany.
  4. AI-oriented broadband and home networks in the era of ION-2030, Liang Zhang, Huawei Technologies, China.
  5. Distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) industry standards and practical use cases, Jun Shan Wey, Verizon, USA.
  6. Broadband Access networks in an IA world, Marcos Martinez, Maxlinear, Spain.
  7. Panel discussion (All)
Session II (AI Datacenters and AI-ready optical networks)
  1. Framework and Requirements for AI deployment in Telco Transport Networks, Juan Pedro Fernández Palacios, Telefónica, Spain
  2. TBD, Chengliang Zhang, China Telecom, China
  3. Sustainable Optical Transport Architectures for AI: The F5G Advanced Perspective, Olivier Ferveur, Post Technologies, Luxembourg.
  4. Silicon photonics Optical switches for next gen AI datacenters, Daniel Pérez-López, Ipronics, Spain
  5. Optical interconnects for scaleup architectures and the standardization efforts, Fotini Karinou, Microsoft, UK.
  6. The current state of AI in Broadband today, and its role in the future, Martin Creaner, World Broadband Association
  7. Panel discussion (All)
  • Closing of the ITU-T ION-2030 symposium, Raul Muñoz (CTTC), Xiang Liu (Huawei) and Glenn Parsons (Chair of ITU-T SG15, Ericsson).

Programmable Photonics: Architectures, Control and Applications
Thursday, September 24, 9:00–10:30, coffee break, 11:00–12:30

Programmable Integrated Photonics (PIP) represents a paradigm shift from application-specific PICs to reconfigurable optical subsystems integrating hardware, electronics, and control algorithms.

Organisers: Wim Bogaerts (Ghent University–imec), Ioannis Tomkos (University of Patras)
Coming soon…