Emerging fibre technology for the petabit/s era

For the past 30 years communications research has focused on finding innovative ways of coding and multiplexing optical signals to unlock the maximum practical ~100Tbit/s/ capacity provided by single-mode optical fibre. However, cost-effective future scaling of network capacity may ultimately benefit from fibre solutions that can exploit multiple spatial modes within a single multimode-core, and/or multiple cores incorporated within the fibre cross-section to increase the per-fibre capacity. In this talk I will review progress towards realizing these new fibre types (along with the key component/subsystems required) and describe the necessary requirements for ultimate commercial deployment.