Foreword to the Special Issue on the 42nd European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC 2016)

The papers in this special section were presented at the 42nd European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC 2016). This conference is the largest conference on optical communication in Europe, and one of the largest and most prestigious events in this field worldwide. Optical Communication is the technological basis of the global internet, which transforms the world into an information and communication society where the information is available everywhere at every time.