As I write this, the Conference on Optical Fiber Communications is one week away. This year, OFC is being held in San Diego, California, and the technical presentations and exhibition remain as strong as ever. The presentations will cover the latest exciting developments in optical communications technology and the trade show will welcome both established players and new companies. 600 exhibitors are expected from 58 countries. Many of the newer exhibitors will reflect the shift in the geographical focus of manufacturing industry that has taken place over the last few years, a shift that is both welcome and inevitable as the industry becomes truly global.
OFC is regarded as a bell-wether of the photonics industry, the communications sector of which has experienced particularly painful and turbulent times in the last decade. However, turbulence in the market masks major success. Ultimately the telecommunications industry is sustained because it is beneficial to society as a whole and individuals are prepared to pay for telecommunication services. Growth in telecommunication service revenues has been steady every year throughout the last decade, increasing from $517 bn in 1996 to $1472 bn in 2006 [source ITU/ICT]. It is significant that no year experienced a downturn in revenue. If growth curves are extrapolated from the mid-1990s, they line up almost perfectly with current growth.
Growth in internet traffic is often highlighted as the key statistic, and indeed the number of internet users has grown 10 fold since 1997, reaching 1.2 billion today and accompanied by a migration from slow to broadband access. However, internet access shows wide variation across different geographical regions and countries. In my view, the more spectacular success is in mobile communications, where the world penetration rate of paid subscribers is expected to reach 50% this month (February 2008) [source ITU/ICT]. This statistic is tremendously exciting and should be celebrated by all those attending OFC. The engineering achievement should also be celebrated, as it is a significant challenge to deliver telecommunication services of all types at an ever decreasing cost per bit. In this context, reducing cost in the optical fiber backbone is as important as the development of ultra-low-cost handsets.
The anomalous event, of course, is the enormous investment made in companies, licenses, and technologies over a period of around three years centered on 2000. Back in the 1990s, a sober, if unimaginative, extrapolation of the growth curve would have led to the conclusion that demand for capacity would be at the levels currently experienced. However, in the 2000 period the market was led by emotion and fevered imagination! Those questioning where the money would come from to support the aggressive growth predictions were told that individuals would be prepared to spend a significantly higher proportion of their disposable income on telecommunications services. History shows that sudden changes in spending patterns are very rare, so demand failed to match expectations and telecom share prices collapsed. As a result investment and pension funds (including IEEE’s own investments) lost large amounts of money. The net result is that a real success of the worldwide engineering community is widely perceived by the public to be a failure.
Through this period of turbulence, however, the OFC conference has remained strong. It is a tribute to the organizing societies – OSA, IEEE Communications Society and LEOS – that competition to present papers has always been healthy and quality has remained high. Moreover, even in times of financial stringency (which are by no means over) industry has continued to send delegates to OFC, valuing the education, training and professional interactions associated with the event.
Optical communications is one industry sector where LEOS plays a leading role, and it does so in cooperation with other societies both within and outside IEEE. Another event that is taking place at OFC is the second LEOS Strategic Planning Workshop. Although this will only be attended by a handful of individuals, its deliberations are likely to be important for the future development of LEOS. I wrote about the first of these meetings in the February column and described how LEOS had already made changes to the membership administration to reflect the priorities set by those attending the Strategic Planning Workshop last year. This year’s workshop will continue to develop a holistic view of the Society’s objectives and follow this by defining specific actions within and cutting across the responsibilities of individual Vice-Presidents.
It is always dangerous to predict the outcome of a future event, but one area where LEOS is likely to decide to focus effort is in building more links with users of photonics technology. Photonics is a truly pervasive technology, covering areas as diverse as welding and cutting systems, printing, medical, avionics, military and defense, displays, solid state lighting, solar power and communications. In the last of these areas, and undoubtedly in some of the others, LEOS can justifiably claim to be a world leader.
I believe LEOS can and should build activity in more application areas. In most cases we can do this from the solid base provided by existing conferences, the summer and winter series of topical meetings, and sessions in the LEOS Annual Meeting. Furthermore, the issue of broadening into more areas of application is an issue of serving the LEOS membership. Two thirds of our members currently work in industry, but, with the exception of OFC, the majority of those attending our conferences are academics. A similar situation applies to our volunteers – the composition of the Board of Governors and most technical committees is almost directly inverted from that of our membership.
Of course the Strategic Planning Workshop has yet to take place, and it will set its own priorities and actions. Assuming we do decide to focus on more fields of application, I believe OFC provides an outstanding model for the way forward. It is an industrially focused meeting recognized internationally as being of the highest quality. Its participants include a large fraction from industry. Its foundations are based on collaboration with other societies.
Whatever priorities emerge from the workshop, I look forward to discussing them with the entire LEOS community, in this Newsletter, at LEOS meetings and via e-mail. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have ideas for the future shape of the Society.