Unveiled At MWC Barcelona 2026, Huawei’s next generation of optical transport networks (OTNs) is transforming their role from passive data pipelines into intelligent, integrated platforms, underpinning critical services across power, rail, government and beyond.
AI is playing an increasing role in how digital infrastructure is reshaped and modernised, especially when it comes to optical transport networks (OTNs). At MWC Barcelona 2026, Gavin Chen, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise Network Marketing & Solution Sales Department explained how Huawei is harnessing the AI revolution to rethink the role of optical networks.
“Huawei has been leading the optical transmission field for 17 years straight, not just in market share, but also in shaping industry thinking,” Gavin explains, during an exclusive one‑on‑one media briefing with our reporter.
“Huawei has built a substantial innovation engine around its optical business with over 8,000 R&D experts,” says Gavin. “Huawei keeps pushing the boundaries. We’ve driven over 100 industry standards and hold 30% of the core patents in this space.”
Gavin highlights the fgOTN solution, first launched at MWC 2024, as a crucial step in Huawei’s evolution of optical networks by laying the groundwork for the next leap: infusing AI directly into the core of the optical transport network.
Transforming a passive pipeline to intelligent infrastructure
Gavin explains that traditionally, the OTN has one key mission: reliably moving data from point A to point B. It’s a high-performance, highly reliable, but essentially passive pipeline. “With AI, we’re changing that,” he says. “AI‑powered OTN brings intelligence into the pipeline itself, embedding AI computing into network devices and weaving it throughout transmission, sensing, and O&M (Operations & Maintenance). This shift tackles the explosive growth in terminal connections and bandwidth driven by AI applications across sectors, while also meeting the rising demand for computing power at the Edge. On top of that, it enables smarter troubleshooting and even human-machine conversational O&M, lowering the skill threshold for O&M engineers.”
Gavin outlines three areas where AI‑powered OTN is delivering concrete breakthroughs: sensing, security and operations.
1. Communication and sensing
One of the most striking advances is the integration of communication and sensing on the same optical fibre. “By using the optical fibre itself as a sensor and applying AI to analyse OTDR signals, we can track changes like temperature, vibration, and stress in real time – without adding extra sensing equipment,” Gavin explains. This turns the network into a sensing platform, capable of monitoring external conditions and physical risks along the fibre route. The benefits are immediate and practical and makes activity such as co-cable service detection and pinpointing intermittent fibre faults much easier.
2. Security and transmission
Security is another area where Huawei is pushing integration, particularly through quantum key distribution (QKD) combined with OTN. “With a QKD board, the same equipment and fibre can deliver high-speed services while also distributing quantum keys, giving services absolute security,” says Gavin. Instead of treating quantum encryption as a bolt‑on technology, Huawei is building it natively into the transport system.
3. Transforming O&M with AI
The clearest change for operators is in the operations and maintenance phase, with networks now able to diagnose and even explain issues themselves. “Instead of engineers manually hunting for faults, the network can diagnose itself. With the NOEMate AI module, root causes can be identified within minutes,” says Gavin.
This consolidation of capabilities has a significant impact on complexity and cost: “What used to require multiple independent systems is now natively built into AI-powered networks and devices. That means lower complexity and reduced TCO. And this is especially valuable for private networks in sectors like power, railways, and government, where reliability, security, and intelligence are non-negotiable.”
What breakthroughs has Huawei made in Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems?
Quantum encryption has promised much in terms of security but has struggled with real‑world deployment. QKD systems have historically relied on dedicated fibres, specific wavelengths, and separate management platforms, but were highly sensitive to environmental disturbances; this made them difficult to integrate into existing networks. Huawei’s approach is to embed QKD as a native capability inside the OTN, enabled by three key innovations:
First, shared fibre and shared equipment:
Huawei’s QKD board and OTN service boards coexist in the same chassis and use the same G.652 fibre. With wavelength isolation, for example, band A for services, wavelength B for quantum signals, and wavelength C for key negotiation, no extra fibre resources are required.
Second, unified management within existing operational tools:
QKD key generation, distribution, and lifecycle management are fully integrated into the NCE-T intelligent management system, operated through the same interface as OTN services. O&M teams no longer need to learn or maintain separate systems.
Third, field‑ready resilience tailored for demanding industries:
For demanding environments such as power grids and railways, Huawei’s quantum optical modules are reinforced with temperature control, vibration resistance, and low-power design. Enhanced by AI-powered oDSP algorithms, they suppress errors even when coexisting with traditional services, delivering greater stability and longer transmission distances than industry peers.
Huawei’s quantum‑enhanced OTN has already been deployed in live networks and is in commercial use at China Southern Power Grid’s Shenzhen Power Supply Bureau, supporting key services such as relay protection. According to Gavin: “Deployment cycles have been shortened from several months to less than two weeks, proving both reliability and practicality in real-world scenarios.”
What is NOEMate?
At the operations layer, Huawei is introducing NOEMate, which Gavin describes as a ‘talking O&M assistant’ that helps operations and maintenance personnel with tasks, and even gives automatic optimisation suggestions. Behind this conversational interface sits NCE‑T, which remains the central control system for OTNs. NCE-T is positioned as the centralised control centre for OTNs, enabling network visualisation, automated deployment, automated service provisioning, and northbound capability openness.
NOEMate, meanwhile, is complemented by proactive, AI‑driven network maintenance. By embedding AI in the boards themselves and using sophisticated analysis models, Huawei aims to detect and remedy issues before they turn into faults. “With AI-powered boards and optical network quality analysis models, potential risks can be visualised in a single view. Issues such as co-ditch or co-cable risks are automatically identified, with optimisation suggestions provided. This proactive approach helps prevent up to 40% of faults,” says Gavin.
When incidents do occur, AI accelerates recovery, using fault feature mapping and chain-of-thought reasoning to intelligently identify and locate faults within seconds, helping to simplify troubleshooting and reduce manpower requirements by more than 70%.
The next wave of digital transformation
Huawei’s AI‑powered OTN vision is to transform optical networks from static transport layers into intelligent, adaptive infrastructure for a highly connected world. By embedding AI, quantum‑grade security and automated operations directly into the optical layer, Huawei aims to make OTNs a secure, resilient, self‑optimising foundation for critical industries—as evidenced by fgOTN backbone deployments at EDM in Mozambique and State Grid Liaoning Electric Power in China—driving forward the next wave of digital transformation.
