Record number of speaker submissions received for Europe’s leading “must-attend” optical communications conference as it returns to London after four decades

Senior Executives from the BBC and BT are confirmed to speak at the biggest European optical research conference, ECOC (European Conference on Optical Communications), which has returned to London for the first time since it was launched at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) more than 40 years ago.

The number of papers submitted for the conference has also exceeded 830 for the first time in its history on topics such as expanding bandwidth, integration of 400G networks and software defined networks (SDN). The speakers come from a variety of business and science backgrounds and include BBC’s Senior Technology Executive Matthew Postgate, BT’s Managing Director, Research and Innovation Dr Timothy John Whitley, and Eli Yablonovitch, Director of the National Science Foundation (USA) Centre for Energy Efficient Electronics Science.

Industry professionals who have submitted a paper will be notified in June and authors will be asked to confirm their participation in the conference by 5 July 2013. The conference will feature a variety of plenary sessions, panels and workshops.

The ECOC 2013 technical programme chairs are currently seeking workshop proposals to feature at the conference. Previous years have included workshops on software defined photonics, optical networks and advantages and challenges for optical and converged networks.

Sir David Payne, General Conference co-Chair for ECOC 2013 said: “I’ve been to ECOC every year since 1975 and it’s the must-attend place to be seen and heard if you are in the photonics industry. The evolution of topics has come a long way from early fibre integration and methods of optical splicing to the capacity of today’s backbone and core networks. Along with new optoelectronic devices, these are the key developments to producing stable and accessible broadband infrastructures for the future. And with the continued growth and penetration of the optical internet, these will be hot-topics for years to come.”

ECOC is the largest conference on optical communication in Europe and is the most respected and long-standing event of its kind in the world. It has been hosted by numerous countries, including Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. The conference has featured leading technical papers throughout the years from a selected blend of researchers, project engineers, sales managers and telecommunication market developers. It attracts audiences from Asia, North America and from across Europe.

Professor Will Stewart, Chair of the IET Communications Policy Panel and General Conference co-Chair for ECOC 2013 added: “The conference has grown from being about research and theory to actual application and results, which will shape the next generation of networks. The development of technology in the photonics, telecommunications and optical industry has made ECOC the global trade show it is today.”

ECOC 2013 is hosted by the IET and will be held at ICC London ExCeL, UK from 22 - 26 September 2013. For more information visit, http://www.ecoc2013.org/