The explosion of broadband services greatly impacts the metropolitan network, creating a new bottleneck. However, traditional solutions are not suitable for today's network problems, based on the large investment that would be needed to address the metro needs.

The objectives of this section are as follows:

• To review metro traffic trends with particular attention on the impact of video services and the effect of the delocalization of content servers.
• To compare architectures for the metro area with the objective of eliminating a great number of local exchanges by directly reaching the end user or a street cabinet through the central office. The differences between FTTC and FTTH will also be analyzed in this framework.
• To discuss and compare the new technologies rising in the metro arena, such as light WDM and carrier-class Ethernet. Other solutions to be analyzed include GPON and WDM-PON, since they are also becoming real metro technologies with respect to their ability to eliminate local exchanges.

Eugenio Iannone Senior Vice President, Application Engineering and Market Validation Pirelli Labs

Mr. Iannone is responsible for business development, application engineering, and market validation. He has held this position for five years after returning from a short stint with Cisco. In 2001, Mr. Iannone moved to Cisco's DWDM business when Pirelli Optical Systems was sold to Cisco. There, he had product management responsibilities in the network dimensioning group. Mr. Iannone first joined Pirelli in 1997 as a member of the network optical design group for Pirelli Optical Systems. He has published several technical papers on network design rules and IP over WDM.

Nigel Bragg Chief Architect, Carrier-Grade Ethernet Technologies Nortel Networks

Mr. Bragg has spent 20 years in the telecom industry, initially in a contract product development environment, and 10 years with Nortel Networks. He has contributed to a wide variety of projects, including design leadership on a high-performance voice-switching system, many aspects of data switching and routing, and automated power optimization in optical line systems. For the past three years, Mr. Bragg has focused on requirements and realization of packet transport for the carrier environment. He is a co-inventor of provider backbone transport.

Stefano Nocentini Head, TIlab Telecom Italia S.p.A.

Mr. Nocentini is responsible for the complete range of platforms and fixed-mobile services, from traditional voice services to value-added data and the migration services aimed at both residential and business customer segments. In this role, he is also responsible for Telecom Italia Lab (the R&D group of Telecom Italia). He began his career with Telecom Italia in 1987. He led several key and innovative projects such as the introduction of ISDN, development on intelligence network platforms and services, evolution of data network toward the NGN - Class 4 replacement, and fixed-mobile convergence.

Ezio Zerbini Head of Technology Ericsson Marconi

Mr. Zerbini has experience in the development of access concentrators, broadband solutions for copper, coax and fiber, product marketing and strategy for transport and broadband access, and technical worldwide strategy and support for relevant telecom operators. Mr. Zerbini is also an IEEE senior member.