Ciena's Steve Alexander and Rebecca Smith on the surge to 1.6 terabits

OTTAWA – Ciena Vectors Event – Ciena CTO Steve Alexander and CMO Rebecca Smith joined the podcast to discuss why the company leapfrogged the industry to develop the WaveLogic 6 modem, a 1.6 Tbit/s coherent optical technology.

Ciena chose to skip over 1.2 Tbit/s to deploy a 1.6 Tbit/s service to position the company for "that 3 to 4 year advantage, which translates into a time to market advantage for our customers in terms of reducing cost per bit, energy per bit and providing the highest possible services that are out there," said Alexander.

Smith and Alexander also discussed Ciena's approach to XR optics, what's next for Ciena's 800G deployments and the company's approach to the Adaptive Network, AI and ML.

Click on the caption button for a lightly edited transcript.

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— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading