PARTNER FEATURE: Kicking off the Global Optical Summit 2025 Europe in Madrid, Perry Yang, president of Huawei Enterprise Optical Domain, argued as a wave of intelligent transformation sweeps the globe, Europe is entering a critical stage.
He declared the rise of AI has reshaped industries across the globe, marking the beginning of a new era of digital transformation. “For Europe, this transformation presents both an opportunity and a challenge — an opportunity to lead the next wave of intelligent development, and a challenge to bridge the gap between ambition and implementation.”
Yang added the optical sector plays a critical role in connectivity and sensing, emerging as a cornerstone for Europe’s intelligent and sustainable future.
Using F5G-A technologies, he said Huawei is building an intelligent connectivity foundation with high bandwidth, low latency and enhanced awareness. “Together with our clients and partners, we are accelerating industry upgrades and helping Europe move toward a high-quality, sustainable and intelligent future.”
F5G-A is a next-generation fixed network standard built to support AI and future high-bandwidth applications, focusing on ultra-broadband, all-optical connectivity.
The event, themed F5G-A Accelerates Industry Intelligence, attracted more than 150 industry experts, customers and ecosystem partners from across Europe to explore the latest trends and deployments of all-optical networks that are driving industrial intelligence and digital innovation.
Powering industry AI
To accelerate the transformation, Huawei introduced an Intelligent Reference Architecture for industries, which emphasises three key elements:
• Computing platforms that provide the required processing power;
• Sensing systems that ensure access to high-quality data;
• Connectivity that guarantees ultra-high bandwidth and low latency for seamless data transmission during training and inference.
The optical industry’s focus on intelligent connectivity and sensing, particularly through F5G-Advanced technologies, underpins this transformation, Huawei stated. The company has contributed to standards and supported multiple partners in deploying intelligent optical solutions across Europe.
F5G-A all-optical networks have been widely adopted across ISPs, education, electric power, government and healthcare.
Case studies
A number of organisations shared their practices and insights into F5G-A all-optical network deployments at the summit.
With AI applications becoming integral to daily life, the home AI penetration rate is rapidly increasing. Consumers now are willing to pay more for enhanced intelligent experiences, presenting a major opportunity for ISPs across the world.
Glasfaser Direkt jointly launched a fibre-to-the-room (FTTR) package in partnership with Huawei.
CMO of the partner, Carrierwerke, Raphael Peschkes, said FTTR not only enhances the user experience, but also lays the foundation for building smarter, more interconnected homes across Germany.
Vialis deployed FTTR in France using Huawei’s F5G-A all-optical network, adopting XGS-PON.
The deployment delivers symmetrical 10Gb/s speeds and seamless Wi-Fi 7 coverage, transforming home connectivity, boosting ARPU and enhancing customer retention.
The upgraded AI-FTTR solution enables new experiences such as 2D-to-3D video conversion, providing users with cinema-like visuals and driving premium package upgrades.
Huawei also has transformed traditional home gateways into AI home hubs with built-in computing power, supporting distributed voice interaction and AI agent deployment — creating new monetisation models for ISPs.
Intelligent campus upgrades
As AI advances, the demand for campus networks has evolved from just connectivity to guaranteed, high-quality experiences. Fibre-to-the-office (FTTO) is emerging as the gold standard for smart campus developments, across a wide range of sectors.
In healthcare, the technology enables uninterrupted network performance by delivering fibre directly to endpoints. This enables hospitals, for example, to reduce cabling costs by 50 per cent, cut low-voltage room usage by 80 per cent and significantly improve operational efficiency.
Jose Antonio Jimenez Caballero, head of Digitalisation of the Standards Department at the Spanish Association for Standardisation UNE, noted passive optical LAN all-optical networks work with its simple architecture, energy efficiency, large bandwidth, and smooth evolution to support efficient data transmission and enable high-quality diagnosis and treatment services in smart healthcare systems.
He said Spain is formulating standards and specifications for smart hospital network construction. “The goal is to leverage all-optical networks to enhance hospital connectivity and meet the evolving needs of the healthcare industry, and comply with the requirements of the Gigabit Infrastructure Act.”
In the hospitality sector, hotels are using a single fibre to support wired and wireless connectivity, telephony and sensing.
Cerium Techologias CEO Daniel Just said Huawei’s FTTO solution enables high-speed networks to reach every corner of a hotel, with its simplified cabling design significantly reducing construction costs.
The offering also supports long-distance transmission and easily covers large spaces such as villas, delivering a seamless high-speed network experience without blind spots.
Enabling smarter infrastructure
Optical sensing plays a crucial role in collecting high-quality data, offering high sensitivity to vibration and temperature. It is widely used for infrastructure protection.
Huawei’s AI fibre sensing solution is deployed in more than 120 projects globally.
Stefan Obucina, Architecture Department director at PUC Belgrade Metro and Train in Serbia, introduced the case study of optical-visual linkage assisting the metro in building intelligent boundaries.
Powered by AI-enhanced fibre sensing, Huawei’s optical-visual linkage perimeter inspection solution delivers zero missed alarms and an ultra-low false alarm rate, efficiently protecting metro operations by preventing intrusions and theft.
A sustainable, intelligent future
Intelligent transformation across industries begins with better connectivity and sensing, Yang suggested. “Powered by F5G-A, Huawei’s all-optical solutions leverage fibre to sense the world accurately, connect every space seamlessly and deliver ultra-broadband performance.”
He ended his keynote by calling on partners and customers across the continent “to join forces in accelerating fibre infrastructure construction and seize the opportunities of the intelligent era. Together, we can pioneer a sustainable, connected, and intelligent future.”