Symposia: Rethinking Optical Networking from an Operational Perspective: The Future of Optical Network Control in the AI Era

Optical networks are becoming increasingly strategic to telecom infrastructure, yet their operational models remain too fragmented to support scalable, trustworthy AI-driven control. This symposium will explore how telecom operators can evolve optical networking from an isolated transport domain into an integral part of a harmonized, AI-driven operations framework. Bringing together perspectives from telecom operators, technology vendors, cloud and AI experts, and the research community, the symposium will address the architectural and operational challenges of achieving this transformation.

Topics to Be Covered

• Why traditional telecom network operations must evolve to overcome operational fragmentation and support greater automation and intelligence.
• How lessons from mobile network automation and cloud-native transformation can accelerate the evolution of optical network operations.
• How optical telemetry, digital twins, intent-based control, and closed-loop automation can enable more intelligent and adaptive optical network operations.
• How trusted operational data, shared telemetry, and cross-domain observability can support AI-driven decision-making.
• How optical networks can participate in end-to-end service orchestration across transport, access, and mobile networks, and what common frameworks and interfaces are needed.
• How AI systems can support or execute network planning and optimization, and where autonomous decision-making can deliver practical value.

Building on the 2026 OFC workshop Rethinking Networking from an Operational Perspective: Towards a Data- and AI-Centric Operational Future, this symposium will feature invited presentations and two panel discussions to identify practical implementation pathways, open challenges, and future research priorities.