This week I'm helping with PR and social media support at the OFC/NFOEC optical conference. This morning, Nortel president of the Metro Ethernet Networks business Philippe Morin will be a main speaker at the plenary session.

Below is a "live blog" of the speaker presentations this morning. Read from the bottom up for my updates in chronological order, and hit refresh to see the latest updates.

• 9:50 - Well my PC battery is almost gone so I'm finishing off this live blog now that Philippe's preso is over.

• 9:45am - Philippe just finished his preso. More housekeeping items before the next speaker.

• 9:42am - Philippe: what's the next frontier...what are the next "impossible" challenges that the industry needs to solve to address this global bandwidth demand?

• Achieving Terabit per lambda

• Access technologies a magnatude lower in cost

• Traditional network components no longer required

• No fixed channel spacing needed

• 9:37am - see below for another chart from Philippe's preso showing two possible scenarios for bandwidth growth.

• 9:36am - Philippe: "brute force will not meet the requirement that people need for bandwidth." Basically a reference for the need for continued innovation and not just"throwing bandwidth" at theproblem.

• 9:35am - Philippe's example of bandwidth growth: March Madness online video. A few years ago the NCAA made the move from a subscriber model to a free viewing model. Viewers increased 50%, which led to $30M in estimated ad revenue in 2009 - more than double 2006 revenue.

• 9:30am - see below for chart reflecting a recent study from Infonetics around estimated worldwide mobile subscribers and mobile broadband subscribers.

• 9:24am - interesting stat from Philippe: Gartner expects video telepresence to replace 2.1 million airline seats by 2012, a total economic impact of $3.5 billion.

• 9:21am - in a recent survey with Webtorials, more than 80% of business have decided to either continue or accelerate their planned IT prjects

• 9:20am - see below for a picture of Philippe during his presentation

• 9:15am - Philippe Morin just introduced. Opened by talking about the fact that there are tremendous opportunities and challenges in the optical industry today. Will focus on the global megatrends driving bandwidth growth even in this economy. 3 key megatrends: New economy and new biz models are accelerating bandwidth growth, bandwidth moves from nice-to-have to necessity, and HD video. Can no longer address these demands just with "brute force"

• 9:10am - Kuldeep Goyal just finished up his session. See below for a pic from his speech. Philippe Morin is up next after the moderator finishes with some housekeeping items.

• 9:05am For BSNL, they currently have ~700K FTTx customers, but by 2015 they expect >7M customers with FTTx.

• 8:55am - Great stat: India Mobile firms added 15.41 million mobile users in the January 2009, which is equal to the total number of additions in the U.S. for the ENTIRE year 2008. Some other BSNL stats...3.2M broadband customers (a 54% market share).

• 8:50am - Really interesting map graphics that Goyal is showing that skew a global map to show comparative fiber growth. India is the biggest country on the map by far.

• 8:45am - First plenary speaker is starting his presentation. Shri Kuldeep Goyal, the Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Sanchar Nigam, Ltd. (BSNL) in India. He will be speaking about the growth of fiber networks in India.

• 8:35am - Now recognizing new fellows to OSA (the Optical Society of America). The number of OSA fellows is limited to no more than 10% of total membership.

• 8:30am - Pic below of John Campbell accepting his award

• 8:25am - Now presenting the John Tyndall Award, which honors the recipient for outstanding contributions to fiber technology. The award is named after the 19th century scientist that is generally credited with helping pioneer fiber optic technology. The recipient this year is Joe Campbell of the University of Virginia. During the presentation he was called "#1 in the world in photo detectors."

• 8:20am - Next is a recognition of four new IEEE fellows being welcomed, as well as four other IEEE photonics society fellows for their contributions to the industry.

• 8:15am - Picture below of the OFC plenary ballroom as attendees were streaming in

• 8:10 starting by presenting a few awards, hosted by John Marsh, president of the IEEE photonics society. The IEEE David Sarnoff Award winners are: Dr Yasuhiko Arakawa, Dr Kam Yin Lau, and Dr Kerry John Vahala.

• 8:05am - the session is starting.