In the world of long telecom cycles, it's optical networking's time again. Carriers are looking toward 100Gbit/s deployment while data centers are crying for even more bandwidth. The advent of reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) is raising the promise of more flexible, agile networks and easier control.

We figured it was well past time for a Light Reading list of the people who are poised to make all this happen, the ones guiding optical networks into their next generation.

Some of the names will look more familiar than others. We strove for a mix of executives and in-the-trenches types. Did we miss anyone painfully obvious? Let us know on the message boards, below.

Contents:

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading

10. Anuj Jain, Bharti Airtel
India is a booming telecom market, and it's created a hunger among vendors. For example: Jain, Bharti Airtel Ltd. (Mumbai: BHARTIARTL)'s VP of network planning, spoke at a recent Light Reading event in India and was reportedly swamped by vendors afterward. He and Jagbir Singh, director of network services, can play a big role in determining which technologies succeed.

Light Reading India recently interviewed Jain about mobile backhaul. Here's a link to the video.

UPDATE: Jain changed jobs right after we posted this list. He's now at Reliance Industries as CTO of Infotel Broadband.

9. Chris Cole, Finisar
A few of the people on this list are active standards participants, Cole among them. He's shown willingness to go against the grain, decrying the 10x10 multisource agreement (MSA) for 100Gbit/s modules, for instance. At the same time, he's not the enemy of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and others who pushed for that MSA -- in fact, he's spoken in favor of having standards bodies consider a 500-meter reach, to suit data center needs. He's a strong voice helping to shape the next generation of optical technologies.

8. John Bowers, U.C. Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) has been a hotbed of optics since before the dotcom boom. A lot of that work has been taken to the outside world by Bowers and his colleague Dan Blumenthal (director of the Terabit Optical Ethernet Center and another candidate for this list). They founded Calient, and Bowers has more recently founded Aurrion , a silicon photonics startup.

Bowers also gets the nod for receiving the 2012 John Tyndall Award in November for his work on hybrid-silicon lasers and photonic integrated circuits. (See John Bowers Wins Tyndall Award.)

7. Dino DiPerna, Ciena
Nortel is still a factor in optical networking. It's just owned by Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN) now, still housed in the old Carling Place campus. (But they'll have to relocate when Canada's Department of National Defence moves in.)

DiPerna has helped launch Ciena's 100Gbit/s generation, and it's under his development that the former Nortel team will either continue to innovate or fall downward toward the rest of the pack. He's in a position to keep the heat on the other systems vendors in what continues to be a contentious market.

6. Basil Alwan, Alcatel-Lucent
You might consider him more a router guy, but Alwan is charged with merging the IP router world with optical transport. Everyone wants to do packet-optical, but Alwan has some impressive resources at his disposal (Bell Labs ) and a good track record on the router side). Under his guidance, we're guessing Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) will implement some ideas that push the industry in new directions.