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Open Transport Community Objectives for 2026 and Beyond

FYUZ 2025 landed several messages from the Telecom Operators leading the Open Optical & Packet Transport community at TIP:


  • IPoDWDM massive adoption by Telcos

  • SDN NBI APIs as the entry door for agentic AI applications

  • Digital Twins as foundational tools to replicate the network and generate AI-ready sandboxes

  • Ethernet-based networking for AI/ML infrastructures

  • Open and Disaggregated Routers for Backbone, Aggregation and Metro Access layers


These working areas closely align with the evolution of TIP OOPT during 2025 and the significant ecosystem progress showcased during the co-chairs’ annual review.


Dan Kilper (left), Director of CONNECT Centre, hosted a tour of CONNECT's research labs as part of the IOWN GF x TIP Walking Tour at FYUZ 2025 in Dublin, Ireland.
Dan Kilper (left), Director of CONNECT Centre, hosted a tour of CONNECT's research labs as part of the IOWN GF x TIP Walking Tour at FYUZ 2025 in Dublin, Ireland.

Strengthening the Open Ecosystem: A Year of Convergence


The synergy between different TIP projects—and increased convergence across open ecosystems—was evident throughout FYUZ.


The TIP OOPT group is now engaging closer with other industry lead initiatives—such as the IOWN Global Forum, the Linux Foundation, and the OIF—to harmonize open API definitions, data models, and testing methodologies. This cross-community engagement is essential for achieving genuine interoperability and ensuring that open standards result in deployable, multi-vendor solutions.


One of the most meaningful developments has been the foundation of a new subgroup, named “Ethernet-based Networks for AI/ML Infrastructure (ENAI)”, co-led by KDDI and AT&T, now formally launched. ENAI aims to define a reference architecture for distributed AI/ML infrastructure communication based on Ethernet, with a clear focus on scaling east-west traffic patterns and enabling high-capacity, low-latency fabrics.


The connectivity of AI infrastructure in distributed datacenters, is a use case also referred by IOWN Global Forum in [1], as one of the main drivers behind the All-Photonics Network (APN) initiative, which can contribute to a reduction in training time, power consumption, and cost for generating an LLM. APN aims to create an optical layer capable of connecting transceivers and optical terminal units across multi-operator domains, seamlessly and without optical–electrical regeneration—a requirement that becomes critical when supporting latency-sensitive AI workloads.


During FYUZ, at CONNECT Research labs in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), a live APN demonstration was hosted and led by NTT and TCD, showcasing next-generation applications of this architecture. This was also the venue for TIP and the IOWN Global Forum to review the accomplishments from the first year of their liaison agreement. Both communities agreed to further collaborate on several fronts, including AI infrastructure connectivity, Digital Twins, and the evolution of optical APIs.


Showcasing Global Momentum: Deployments, Trials, and Maturity

FYUZ 2025 highlighted that open transport is no longer a niche. According to the OOPT co-chairs:


  • Telefónica reported their target that 60% of all traffic will be transported by IPoDWDM solutions.

  • AT&T reported that over 80% of its core traffic already runs through its distributed disaggregated backbone routers (DDBR).

  • KDDI is expanding its disaggregated core deployments based on  the DDBR cluster architecture across its entire network.

  • TIP Phoenix world's first open and disaggregated open optical terminal (O-OT) solution has been commercialized in Japan (NTT). The hardware ecosystem for Open Optical Terminal solutions also expanded significantly, with new TIP Phoenix-compliant [2] products launched by Pegatron and Edgecore, and Pegatron receiving a TIP Bronze badge.


On the IP transport side, Disaggregated Aggregation Routers (DAR) saw strong adoption, especially across Tier 2 operators. These deployments are bridging the long-standing gap between access (DCSG) and core (DDBR), enabling hybrid and converged architectures.


Meanwhile, IP and MUST IPoDWDM workstreams of the MUST subgroup, are progressing rapidly, with the first Bronze Badge awarded to Adtran DCSG NOS and major interoperability testing event held at Telefónica Labs.


Looking Ahead: OOPT Community Priorities for 2026

Building on all the momentum from 2025, the OOPT community has aligned on several strategic objectives for 2026:


1. Scale Open and Standard IPoDWDM solutions’ adoption across Telecom Operators

In the successful multi-vendor interoperability testing initiative led by Telefónica in 2025, router vendors such Nokia and IP Infusion, and coherent pluggable vendors like Ciena, NEC, and Smartoptics, and test companies such as VIAVI Solutions, collaborated to bring up comprehensive test results and find solutions to the interoperability issues found. The activity was focused on evaluating the integration between routers and coherent pluggables through OIF CMIS 5.0 standard interface and the router’s management and control through NETCONF/gNMI OpenConfig-based open APIs. 

Operators will continue exploring plug-and-play coherent pluggable integration and vendor-neutral SDN control, and the MUST subgroup will deliver their technical requirements and recommended reference implementation agreement based on last 2 years’ work by Q1 2026.


2. Consolidate SDN NBIs for Agentic AI

As Software Defined Networking (SDN) data models and reference implementations for Optical Transport (TAPI and OpenConfig-based APIs) and IP (IETF and OpenConfig) continue to mature, AI applications have an unprecedented opportunity to benefit from this industrial effort. Standard interfaces ensure that AI systems can interact with the network programmatically, opening the door to self-optimizing, autonomous operations.


The MUST subgroup optical workstream intends to complete multi-phase Northbound Interface (NBI) Test plans based on T-API 2.1.3 (Topology, Inventory, Provisioning and Fault Management) early next year, to pave the way for interop testing activities next year. On the IP transport side, the group is also focused on defining the IP SDN Controller NBI technical requirements to start evaluating the solutions available in market in 2026.


3. Digital Twins enablers for Agentic AI and Operational Automation

Digital Twins is an important part of the equation to realize these new use cases, with the increasing need of data to feed up Agentic AI applications. Their role within the OOPT roadmap is twofold:


  1. Network Planning and Optimization - On the one hand, Digital Twins, built from data acquired from the real network deployed infrastructure, will allow operators to more accurately simulate changes, plan upgrades, and analyze multi-layer inter-dependencies to optimize their networks.

  2. Data Sandboxes for Agentic AI - Moreover, as agentic AI systems require large volumes of structured and contextual data, Digital Twins can provide safe, synthetic, and high-quality environments where new AI applications can be trained, validated, and benchmarked.


The TIP OOPT community efforts in 2026 will focus on the current definition of architecture, interfaces, and use cases started by the MUST Optical Planning Use Cases document [3] and will relay into GNPy open API definitions to empower AI agents and automated planning tools.


4. Deliver Ethernet-based Networks for AI/ML Infrastructures solutions

A clear target for 2026 is the definition of deployment scenarios and reference architectures for Ethernet-based Networks for AI/ML Infrastructures solutions within the new ENAI subgroup.


The ENAI subgroup will assess the use-cases requirements, and focus on the objectives and milestones for the next year with the ambition of releasing the first reference technical requirements and the TIP Requirements Compliance vendors evaluation (RFI) within FYUZ 2026.


5. Deepen Collaboration Across Ecosystems

Continue engaging with IOWN, Linux Foundation, and OIF on optical transport, SDN and IPoDWDM to ensure automation, interoperability, portability, and global adoption. 


Expand the collaboration with OCP and Mplify towards Ethernet-based networks for AI Infrastructure.


Conclusion

FYUZ 2025 has functioned as a valuable assessment point for the health of the TIP OOPT community. Operators, vendors, labs, and ecosystems demonstrated that open optical and packet transport solutions are no longer experimental—they are mature, deployable, and ready to evolve into the fabric of AI-era networks.


As we look toward 2026, the path is clear:


To build programmable, AI-ready, open networks capable of supporting massive scale, multi-operator interoperability, and the next wave of digital innovation.


The OOPT community is aligned to deliver this vision.


Hideki Nishizawa, Senior Research Engineer & Supervisor of NTT's Network Innovation Laboratories, at Trinity College Dublin's CONNECT Centre in November 2025.
Hideki Nishizawa, Senior Research Engineer & Supervisor of NTT's Network Innovation Laboratories, at Trinity College Dublin's CONNECT Centre in November 2025.

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