18 Mar 2026
12:30 - 14:00
Expo Theater I
Discover how carriers are rethinking long-haul networks to meet rising traffic demands and new technology challenges. This session highlights the latest trends in metro/long-haul convergence, investment priorities and innovations shaping the future of carrier infrastructure.
Moderator
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Balagangadhar (Bala) Bathula
Principal Member of Technical Staff, AT&T, United States
Panelists
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Jeff Mundt
Verizon, United States
Jeff Mundt is the Senior Director of Optical Transport Planning at Verizon, leading teams responsible for PON networks, passive devices (including fiber cable, handholes, etc.), and Metro/ULH transport networks since 2025. Prior to this role, he worked at Verizon for 33 years in various Engineering and Network Planning roles of increasing responsibility in Submarine Cable systems, the OTN Mesh network, and OSS integration planning. Jeff is based at Verizon's Transport lab in Richardson, Texas, USA, and lives in McKinney, TX with his wife.
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Juan Pedro Fernandez-Palacio
Telefonica, Spain
Juan Pedro Fernández-Palacios received the MS in Telecommunications Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia in 2000. In September of 2000, he joined Telefonica I+D, where his research activities were focused on the design of new data and control plane architectures for IP over optical networks. He is the author of 6 patents filed in Europe and the US and more than 80 publications in conferences and journals. He was the coordinator of two European research projects on optical transport networks (MAINS and IDEALIST) between 2011 and 2014. In 2013, he joined the Telefonica Global CTO office as Head of Transport. In 2016, he also took this position in Telefonica-O2 Germany. From June 2017 to March 2020, he was in charge of the Integrated Transport Centre, a global organization within Telefonica responsible for defining the strategic network planning for IP, DWDM, MW, and satellite networks in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. From 2019, he is responsible for Transport Technology in GCTIO and has led the iFUSION project for common and vendor-agnostic Transport SDN deployment in IP, optical, and MW networks within Telefonica Group. Currently, he is co-chairing the MUST and TFS groups within the Telecom Infra Project and ETSI, respectively
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Qingyun Liu
AT&T, United States
Wendell Liu, Expert Member of Technical Staff at AT&T, has been working in the telecom industry for over thirty years, with diverse experiences from field and center operations, new technology evaluation and certification, and optical network architecture. Wendell is currently involved in OpenROADM MSA promoting open and interoperable optical network architecture and solutions.
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Takayuki Kobayashi
NTT, Japan
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Werner Weiershausen
Deutsche Telekom, Germany
Werner Weiershausen is the lead architect for German transport platforms at Deutsche Telekom, being responsible for the evolution of Germany’s multi-layer networks. This includes optical transport for long-haul, mobile backhaul, and fronthaul, and fixed access; OTN and IP-over-WDM integration; and applications such as QKD. He is engaged in open ecosystem evolution for vendor-agnostic all-optical and IP-optical networks with regard to user and control plane interoperability and overarching orchestration, which is driven by different standardization bodies such as TIP and OpenROADM, for the latter, Werner is a DT delegate and board member.
After graduating in Electrical & RF Engineering in 1992, he began his career at the Universities of Ulm and Darmstadt, Germany, as a researcher in the field of integrated optical devices based on III/V semiconductors, with the focus on manufacturing technology, mathematical modeling, and measurement technology. Since 1998, he has worked for Deutsche Telekom as a researcher in fiber-optic transmission, particularly in PMD and nonlinear impairments, and later as a manager for various DT projects. Prior to his architectural roles at DT, he served as CSO on the management board of Luxdyne Ltd., Espoo, Finland (optical FTTx subsystems).
He is author or co-author of over 100 scientific articles, conference contributions, and technical patents and has been active in standardization (IEC, ITU-T, DKE, OpenROADM) as well as in conference organization, for example, as a symposium chair of SPIE Optics East and in various chair positions at Photonics West, ITCom, and OFC.