Dear Friends and Optical Colleagues from all over the world,
The joint Chairs wish you warmly welcome to the 43rd ECOC held in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden.

We believe you will find ECOC 2017 an exhilarating and concentrated mixture of technological and social connectivity. The conference, the exhibition, the venue, and the city itself are all practically on top of each other, giving you the best possible opportunity to connect with science, colleagues, customers, companies, and products from the entire globe.

The city of Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden, an old 17th century seaport with a fortified and moated old town. Dutch and British merchants were prominent in its early days, and the city was originally laid out with canals instead of streets to assist the transport mode of those days – ships – long before optical fibre. Today, the old fortifications and canals are mixed with a modern and charming maritime city with everything within walking distance from the conference venue. The Gothenburgers are known for their friendly and open attitude, and English is spoken everywhere.

ECOC 2017 is a Nordic conference; Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland all co-operate for the event. The Nordic countries are well known for their leading industries and communication technologies and we hope you will take the opportunity to extend and improve your business in all of Scandinavia. We will be happy to assist you with business contacts for all countries.

This year, we are aiming at the first Environmental Certification of an ECOC Conference. Both the city and the venue are top-ranked in sustainability, and we have been working through all conference processes against the standard “Svensk Miljöbas”. The biggest challenge, however, is not the eco-cookies for the coffee, but the approximately 1 500 tonnes of carbon that a typical ECOC emits in terms of air-travel. Despite all our efforts on Optical Communication… We have therefore introduced the “Green Platinum Sponsor” level that specifically supports the CO2-compensation for the air travel. We hope this, quite necessary, arrangement will continue and become the premier sponsoring item.

The Social Programme is as full as usual, the get-together after the workshops, an evening at the science center across the street from the conference, a concert, and a conference dinner down in the old harbour sheds. Also, the town is only a few minutes by foot or tram away, so do take a break and enjoy the old town.

On the technical side, the developments in coherent systems and advanced modulation are fascinating. ”Light” today is just another carrier, and we treat it like radio technology, but at 193 THz. Amazing. With systems pretty much up at the Shannon limit and good old Ethernet at 400 Gb/s, it seems that Fibre-To-The-Home has, shall we say, sufficient capacity for the moment? Probably, quite a few of us have 10Gb/s Ethernet at home, but with low utilization… Instead, Datacenters have emerged as the bandwidth-guzzler, but with different topology, distances and challenges than access networks. But the power, size and cost-focus is even stronger. This new direction is evident in the creation of a new Subcommittee at ECOC this year – ”Datacom and Computercom Hardware”. And Sunday’s are not free anymore, as you may have noticed. The ECOC workshop series is transforming into a full-day, six-parallell-session event and a dynamic discussion platform for the very latest issues – don’t miss it.

In all, ECOC is at the leading tech – and social – edge as usual, and we hope you take the opportunity to enjoy both the technical and social scene here in Gothenburg.

Once again, warmly welcome,