ECOC 2019 summary: optical networking industry more cutthroat going forward

Link here: https://www.lightreading.com/optical-ip/post-ecoc-2019-optical-networking-beyond-the-thunderdome/a/d-id/754791?page_number=1

First off, I run /r/siliconphotonics, which covers the semiconductor industry's attempt to branch into optics, so my summary of the above link is from that perspective.

The European Conference on Optical Components (ECOC) is Europe's largest conference of its type. The industrial focus is usually on networking for obvious reasons. A few interesting nuggets:

• The Ethernet market is collapsing this year with -18% year-over-year revenue projected. The author speculates that this is driven by lower Tier 1 company demand rather than pricing pressure
• China is holding up least a couple of the major industry acquisitions, including Cisco/Acacia and II-VI/Finisar
• Alibaba is sourcing its own 400 gigabit transceivers through Chinese hardware company HiSense. HiSense will be using silicon photonics technology instead of more traditional methods involving free space optics and fibers. As far as I know, a big provider self-sourcing this component is unusual.
• More buzz about co-packaged optics and electronics in single chips for the 51.2 terabit switch generation and the probable death of pluggables due to power constraints. The two main efforts to move beyond pluggables are COBO and co-packaged optics, lead by Microsoft and Microsoft/Facebook, respectively. If and when this happens, it's expected that silicon photonics will be the only way forward