Telecom operators could get new ways to serve artificial intelligence data centers and enterprise customers under a Huawei proposal for optical links, including hyperscaler connections and private computing lines.
Huawei outlined the plan in Vienna on Oct. 14 as part of its LIGHTS all-optical network concept. The company’s event agenda lists the AIDC-focused presentation during the NGON Optical Transport Innovation Forum. LIGHTS names six capabilities: Low Latency, Intelligent Operation, Green Foundation, High Reliability, Tbps-level Capacity and Security Assurance.
The proposal covers data-center interconnection (DCI) and data-center access (DCA) over an optical transport network (OTN). Huawei says the DCI system supports capacity from 800G to 2T and uses an OTN capacity pool to prepare capacity across multiple directions in advance.
For data-center access, Huawei lists end-to-end optical cross-connects, millisecond-level wavelength switching, fine-grain OTN channels from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps, and quantum key distribution. The company says hardware and software upgrades could support a “zero-outage” network.
Huawei identifies three potential services for operators: links between hyperscalers’ data centers, private lines for enterprise computing, and services that combine computing with network access. It links the proposal to demand from AI-focused data centers and says operators could differentiate offerings through bandwidth, latency, reliability and security rather than selling bandwidth alone.
The company cited unnamed operators in China’s Hubei province that combine network and computing services for education, health care and finance. Huawei did not name the operators or provide customer, revenue or deployment figures for those examples.
