In this podcast, we spoke with Amit Thakar, vice president of signal integrity product marketing at Semtech, about the shift from DSP-based to linear optical architectures and other issues.

About the Podcast In the Lightwave Broadband Pulse podcast, we address key issues affecting the optical and broadband industries. Join us every week for insights from industry leaders on these topics. Visit our website at www.lightwave.com and click on our podcast site at www.broadbandpulse.podbean.com/.

In this latest Broadband Pulse podcast, we talked to two industry veterans about how to help service providers be proactive in managing their diverse networks:

• Jim Brinksma, senior vice president of software solutions at Light River
• Marcelo McAndrew, VP of software product management at LightRiver

LightRiver won a Lightwave Innovation Review award for its Prism product, a customizable, user-friendly application for optimizing multi-vendor, multi-generation fiber optic networks.

About the Podcast In the Lightwave Broadband Pulse podcast, we address key issues affecting the optical and broadband industries. Join us every week for insights from industry leaders on these topics. Visit our website at www.lightwave.com/podcasts and click on our podcast site at www.broadbandpulse.podbean.com/.

Lightwave’s 21st Diamond Technology Reviews will again recognize innovation in broadband communications, video transmission, and related technologies, featuring a new wave of technologies to address the drive toward 10G and beyond networks.

As a new version of the DTR awards, we will not only likely see a crop of innovations in back office, fiber, software, testing, video distribution, Wi-Fi, and other areas, but we’re also going to refresh our lineup of judges.

The Lightwave DTR program will follow the usual procedures: We will invite vendors serving the standard broadband and cable industry to submit information on products released or upgraded since last year’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo (October 2025).

If you are a vendor interested in being considered for the DTR Innovation Reviews, we encourage you to submit an entry today!

About the Podcast In the Lightwave Broadband Pulse podcast, we address key issues affecting the optical and broadband industries. Join us every week for insights from industry leaders on these topics. Visit our website at www.lightwaveonline.com/podcasts/broadband-pulse and click on our podcast site at www.broadbandpulse.podbean.com/.

In the third and final episode of the OFC 2026 show daily podcast, we're tracking key trends during the show.

During the third day, we looked at various issues, including:

• Improving research workflows
• AI’s role in the optical network
• Corning’s new fiber, cable and connectivity solutions
• Legrand’s Chroma Link fiber cabling solution
• Semtech’s new copper and fiber data center innovations
• OFC’s plenary sessions
• Lightwave’s OFC 2026 coverage page

Tune in each day during OFC 2026 for more insights on the optical industry's key trade show.

About the Podcast In the Lightwave Broadband Pulse podcast, we address key issues affecting the optical and broadband industries. Join us every week for insights from industry leaders on these topics. Visit our website at www.lightwave.com/podcasts and click on our podcast site at www.broadbandpulse.podbean.com/.

In the second episode of the OFC 2026 show daily podcast, we're tracking key trends during the show.

During the second day, we looked at various issues, including:

• Rising data center CapEx
• Ciena, Cisco and Nokia unveil new multi-rail optical solutions
• Lightwave’s event: Scaling the AI Data Center: Optical Technologies Redefining Data Center Interconnection

Tune in each day during OFC 2026 for more insights on the optical industry's key trade show.

About the Podcast In the Lightwave Broadband Pulse podcast, we address key issues affecting the optical and broadband industries. Join us every week for insights from industry leaders on these topics. Visit our website at www.lightwave.com and click on our podcast site at www.broadbandpulse.podbean.com/.

In the first episode of the OFC 2026 show daily podcast, we're tracking key trends during the show.

During the first day, we looked at various issues, including:

• OIF and Ethernet Alliance's interoperability efforts
• The new Optical Scale-up Consortium
• Optica's Optica Executive Forum
• Celebrating the 2026 Lightwave Innovation Reviews Honorees

Tune in each day during OFC 2026 for more insights on the optical industry's key trade show.

About the Podcast In the Lightwave Broadband Pulse podcast, we address key issues affecting the optical and broadband industries. Join us every week for insights from industry leaders on these topics. Visit our website at www.lightwave.com and click on our podcast site at www.broadbandpulse.podbean.com/.

Broadcom is taking on the 400-Gig-per-lane optical PAM-for-DSP challenge with its Taurus BCM 83640, optimized for 1.6-T transceiver solutions.

The 400 gigabit-per-lane (400G/lane) optical PAM-4 DSP is the next-generation technology for high-speed data center connectivity, designed to double the throughput per optical lane compared to current 200G/lane solutions. This advancement is critical for AI infrastructure, enabling 1.6T and 3.2T optical transceivers and supporting future 204.8T switching capacities.

In this latest Broadband Pulse podcast, we talked with two key members of Broadcom's optical networking team, leading the company's latest 400G/lane optical DSP efforts, as well as being a co-founder of the new Optical Scale-up Consortium:

Natarajan Ramachandran, director, product marketing at Broadcom

And

Khushrow Machhi, senior director, product marketing at Broadcom

0.00 Opening

0:03 Introducing our guests

0:59 OFC 2026 expectations Ramachandran and Machhi share their expectations for the OFC 2026 show.

6:44 400G/lane optical How 400G per lane technologies are the next evolution of the 200G per lane architectures.

9:34 Broadcom’s new Taurus BCM 83640 How Taurus supports 8 lanes of 200G traffic from a GPU, an XPU, or a switch and converts it into four lanes of 400G traffic.

11:31 Taurus’ support for optical modules from 1.6 T to 3.2T How the platform reflects the next generation of gearboxes and retimers.

13:10 Addressing customer expectations Taurus will address the roadmap to 3.2T pluggables.

14:27 The importance of interoperability In addition to its active roles with the OIF and IEEE, Broadcom is a founding member of the new Optical Scale-up Consortium.

15:57 Final Thoughts/Closing

Meet our guests

Natarajan Ramachandran, director, product marketing at Broadcom Based in San Jose, Natarajan Ramachandran is a director of product marketing at Broadcom. He brings experience from previous roles at Broadcom, Biomorphic and Philips Semiconductors. He is responsible for Business Development, Product Management & Product Marketing for high-speed networking PHYs within the Semiconductor industry, focused on Datacom (Hyperscale/Cloud and Enterprise Data Centers), Telecom, and high-performance computing (AI/ML) markets. Ramachandran holds an MBA in Finance, Global Economics and Management at UCLA Anderson School of Management. He also holds an MS in electrical engineering, integrated circuits and systems from UCLA.

And Khushrow Machhi, senior director, product marketing at Broadcom Macchi oversees product marketing at Broadcom with a particular focus on optical networking technologies, including the datacom (Hyperscale/Cloud and Enterprise Data Centers), Telecom and High-Performance Computing (AI/ML) markets. Macchi has worked at Broadcom for over 24 years. Previously, he held positions at Level One Communications / Intel. He holds an MBA in marketing from San Diego University and a degree from the University of Texas at Arlington.

About the Podcast In the Lightwave Broadband Pulse podcast, we address key issues affecting the optical and broadband industries. Join us every week for insights from industry leaders on these topics. Visit our website at www.lightwave.com and click on our podcast site at www.broadbandpulse.podbean.com/.

Upstream traffic on DOCSIS and fiber-based broadband networks continues to rise. The OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) fourth quarter report revealed that investments in higher-speed upstream network plant can pay dividends for fiber and DOCSIS broadband providers. One of the key findings in OVBI’s fourth quarter report was that fiber broadband users consumed more upstream bandwidth than those on a DOCSIS network. As a first-ever point-in-time comparison of fiber vs. DOCSIS subscribers in a selected broadband system, OVBI reports that subscribers on a fiber network with symmetrical 677 Mbps speeds consumed 93.0 GB of upstream bandwidth.

Fiber usage was 66% higher than the 56.0 GB used by subscribers on the same system’s DOCSIS networks, which were provisioned at an average upstream speed of 17.3 Mbps. The report noted that the “fiber comparison suggests that latent upstream demand already exists on DOCSIS networks and is likely to be activated as performance barriers are removed – resulting in rapid scaling of upstream consumption that further shifts.” Overall, OVBI found that upstream usage continued to outpace all other metrics in 2025. The year-end average of 55.86 across fiber and DOCSIS platforms represented a 21.7% year-over-year increase over the 45.9 record in 2024 and a 16.4% increase over 3Q25’s 47.98 GB.

In this podcast, The Broadband Pulse caught up with OpenVault CEO and founder Mark Trudeau about how broadband providers are seeing new upstream traffic growth.

Key moments in this episode

0.00 Opening

0:03 Introduction of the guest

0:30 State of the broadband market Trudeau notes how it emphasizes solutions that help broadband providers operate networks optimally.

1:32 OVBI’s Q4 report findings How upstream bandwidth is outpacing downstream growth.

3:10 Upstream usage drivers A host of factors, including content creation, gaming, teleworking, and AI, are driving a rise in upstream traffic.

4:15 Fiber and DOCSIS While fiber can offer symmetrical services immediately, cable needs to upgrade the upstream DOCSIS path to overcome capacity constraints.

6:0 DOCSIS upstream weapons Cable operators are leveraging split architectures, expanding spectrum and profile management to enhance upstream on their DOCSIS networks.

9:00 Cable’s fiber drive Cable operators, particularly large ones, are deploying last-mile fiber on a case-by-case basis.

10:20 Network stress OVBI examines how steady percentage growth figures can mask progressively larger traffic volumes that place increased stress on provider networks.

11:34 Broadband usage patterns How OVBI measures monthly average usage, average downstream usage, and medium usage.

14:23 Final Thoughts/Closing Mark Trudeau provides the Broadband Pulse with his final thoughts about OVBI’s latest broadband report.

Meet our guest

Mark Trudeau, founder and CEO of OpenVault As a self-proclaimed data geek, Mark is passionate about leveraging data to develop technologies that improve the world. Specifically, he has been instrumental in providing broadband operators with market data to anticipate residential and business broadband trends as well as tools that help service providers optimize network performance, increase revenue, and improve subscriber satisfaction. Growth has been a part of OpenVault’s story. In just the last two years, Trudeau has grown the company through the pandemic, including launching OVBI, an industry-renowned quarterly data report; securing strategic investment from key customers; acquiring a world-class research and development team; and being named twice among the industry’s Top 100 Power Players by Cablefax.

Before founding OpenVault, Trudeau led numerous technology companies through tremendous growth, achieving success for customers and investors. Trudeau served as CEO of Ventraq, a private-equity-backed provider of software-based analytics solutions to the global telecom industry. He also helped to launch and build the wireless business at Omnipoint, the first GSM wireless provider in the New York metropolitan area. He grew up in upstate New York and attended Union College, where he was a multi-sport collegiate athlete, who supports the Red Sox and Dallas Cowboys. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, with his wife, Lauren. Together, they raised two children.

About the Podcast In the Lightwave Broadband Pulse podcast, we address key issues affecting the optical and broadband industries. Join us every week for insights from industry leaders on these topics. Visit our website at www.lightwave.com/podcasts or broadbandpulse.podbean.com/ to stay on top of the latest episodes.