Guest Editorial. Optical communications and networking series

Why is the optical network to date not as successful commercially as many previously thought it would be and what can the research community do to help? The author offers his opinion on this question. When one gives the first part of this question some thought, several possibilities naturally come to mind: has the cause been substandard optical network performance? Have venture capitalists and entrepreneurs killed the market with glut by miscalculating and overbuilding the core? In my view, both contributed to the problem, but mostly, it is that optical networks have been engineered with insufficient attention given to the cost incurred by the end-user.