Beyond the Fiber - S1E2 - Voice of the Customer with Lumen

The Challenge: Service Providers are facing a dual pressure: exploding bandwidth demands from AI/ML workloads and the critical need to reduce cost-per-bit. Traditional hub-and-spoke architectures can no longer keep up. Francis will pull back the curtain on how Lumen is transforming its metro and long-haul networks using Cisco Routed Optical Networking. In this session, we will explore: • Architectural Evolution: Moving from legacy transport to a converged, flat IP+Optical layer. • Scaling for AI: How Lumen is deploying 400G/800G to support massive Data Center Interconnect (DCI) demands. • Operational Efficiency: Practical insights on automating multi-layer provisioning to speed up time-to-service.