Light Reading pointed out that in 2023, almost all technology trends will depend on fast connections, and optical networks will have a place in it. Optical fiber offers greater bandwidth, security and reliability than any other medium, but throughout the world of optical networking, there are many moving parts. Here are some optical networking trends that some analysts say they will be watching in 2023. 


Pluggable Optics
Sterling Perrin, an optical networking analyst at Heavy Reading, view "pluggable optics everywhere" as a dominant theme.“This includes the continued evolution of 400ZR and ZR, but is also very focused on downsizing to small coherent 100G pluggable devices, pluggable devices across 5G XHaul networks, and PON pluggable devices,” he wrote in a note to Light Reading.


Data Center Transmission
Lisa Huff, the senior principal analyst for optical networking at Omdia, will be watching closely to see if 800G and 1.6T transmissions will emerge in the data center. She wrote, "we are doing 400G deployments in data centers. As usual, there is a lot of hype around what the next data rate will be." 
“Omdia expects to start deploying 2x400G and 8x100G solutions in data centers in 2023, but we won’t see mass deployments until around 2025 when DR4 and FR4 mature and 400G starts to slow down.” 1.6 Deployment of the T could start in 2026, but Lisa Huff said it might not be until 2027 or later.


Next Generation DSP
Recessions typically affect sales of optical delivery systems, but Dell'Oro vice president Jimmy Yu said that with so many supply chain issues, 2023 could be different. "In 2023, we believe the supply shortage will ease, allowing manufacturers to have more shipments and higher revenues," wrote Jimmy Yu.
He also forecasts Ciena and Infinera to announce their next-generation coherent digital signal processing (DSP) plans. Cisco has announced that it will launch 1.2 Tbit/s coherent DSP in 2023. We still have no news from Ciena and Infinera." Jimmy Yu wrote.


Coherent Routing
Finally, Timothy Munks, senior principal analyst at Omdia, said that as data traffic grows at the network edge, network operators are looking for better solutions to collect and move it into the metro and core networks. 
He wrote "The convergence of IP and optical, or coherent routing, provides cost-effective aggregation and transport of disparate traffic streams and provides network operators with a pure growth-on-demand business model to increase capacity."


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