Therefore, as the next decade unfolds, most of today’s telecommunications network will end up in the scrap heap. In its place, an array of new transport, switching and software will deliver novel media-rich services to end users at speeds beyond our imagination. The task of building equipment and providing the services that will get us there is arguably the most colossal undertaking of our lifetimes. For today’s scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, the Generation I network will serve as their footprint on history. To achieve this legacy, the task will be to create, build or revitalize a host of sustainable companies that will allow the industry to endure throughout the millennium.

It took 100 years to build the collection of disparate voice and data networks known as the Public Switching Telephone Network (PSTN), but today’s PSTN is optimized for human-to-human communications, whereas the future will belong to human-to-machine and machine-to-machine communications. People are inherently band-limited (they will never be able to process more data at a significantly faster rate than they can now), but humans have an insatiable appetite for information. Thus, machine-to-machine communications will drive unprecedented bandwidth consumption in the future.

Many network service providers are taking drastic steps to prepare for the data-centric future. Although an obvious short-term fix is increased capacity, optical technologies are the solution of choice. Already, early players like Avanex and Sycamore have been rewarded with lofty market valuations made in record time. The VC buzzword du jour is “optical.” In fact, venture capital firms poured a staggering $794.6 million into 30 Silicon Valley optical networking startups in the second quarter of this year alone.

However, the challenge is much larger than just increasing the size of the pipes. The real issue is what applications are possible when very low cost, intelligent, and abundant bandwidth is widely available. Cost reduction and network simplifications that enable new broadband applications are the cornerstones of the Generation I Network. Literally every functional area of the current network is being affected, in real time, by this radical transformation from a voice-centric single-service platform to a packet-centric multi-service platform.

Understanding Changing Service Provider Requirements