Review of the 2017 Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) Conference

Your editors attended the 2017 Optical Fibers Communications (OFC) Conference for two days. Such a short visit is hardly sufficient to present a complete overview of what is considered the major annual worldwide event dealing with optical fiber communications. Yet, our brief glimpse of the exhibits and the papers presented should give the reader a feel for some of the major recent developments. To begin with, the attendance of nearly 15,000 people from all over the world was a record high for the last few years, indicating that growth is on a upward trend. We found the conference well organized and we were kept informed daily via email of the major presentations and exhibits taking place. The supporting staff was gracious and helpful, which greatly facilitated access to presentations and exhibits. The meeting’s keynote is, as always, the plenary session. In this session, Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of technical infrastructure and Google Fellow at Google, presented projections of needs for the near future: