This month’s cover story describes some of the companies that may not be familiar to the average attendee at OFC 2022. But, in some ways thanks to COVID-19, we all might be a little unfamiliar with everyone at the show, given the fact that the pandemic forced an all-virtual event in 2021 and sharply reduced attendance in 2020.
So it’s good to have an opportunity to reintroduce ourselves to each other in San Diego this year. Who are we in 2022? We’re an industry that has seen the necessity for the technologies and services we provide underscored over the past two years. Fiber-optic networks have supported work-from-home strategies that have enabled companies around the globe to operate as efficiently and as safely as the pandemic would allow. Governments worldwide have now recognized the importance of linking as many of their citizens as possible to fiber and are funding the deployment of more optical communications infrastructure.
But challenges remain. We’ll marvel at some of the technologies described in conferences or on display in the exhibit hall. But supply chain shortages will make bringing these advances to the people who can use them difficult for some time.
We’ll need innovation, which this industry has in abundance. But we’ll also need something that sometimes has become as difficult to find lately as semiconductors. We’ll need some patience. Maybe we’ll find new sources of that virtue as we greet each other again in person in San Diego.