Infinera had talked about this flexible-bandwidth idea as well, allowing a link to trade off capacity for reach as necessary.  Obviously the idea is old in wireless, and it's apparently an old discussion even within the optical world, but it's getting some play in the technical sessions, I'm told.  (I'll comb the listings later.)

I find the idea intriguing. As with the gridless ROADM, it's still too early to tell how the idea would get applied, but it's probably going to be inserted into the terabit discussion.

btw, thanks to Century Seals Inc. and marketing engineer Joe Favinger -- we were on the show floor, and they loaned us one of the chairs for this shoot. Christoph is a LOT taller than me, so our video folks decided to shoot us sitting down.