INCOMPAS Show

Attendees, exhibitors & solutions

Who this event is for

Industry trends

Key trends shaping this market and its wider industry.

Market news

Latest updates from across the market.

Arrival airports

Choose from the following airports, with convenient access to the event and venue.

Hotel tiers

A range of accommodation options near the venue and across key areas.

Local transport

Get around the city with these convenient transport options.

Frequently asked

Glossary

1

CLEC

Competitive Local Exchange Carrier - a telecom operator that competes with the incumbent local exchange carrier, often using leased last-mile, unbundled network elements or its own fiber to serve business, wholesale and residential customers.

2

ILEC

Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier - the established telephone company that owns much of the legacy local access network in a territory, such as copper loops and central offices.

3

Open access fiber

A wholesale fiber model where the network owner sells capacity to multiple retail ISPs or service providers rather than only selling directly to end users.

4

Dark fiber

Unlit fiber strands leased to an operator or enterprise that attaches its own optical electronics, giving control over capacity, protocols and route diversity.

5

Lit transport

Fiber transport sold with active electronics and a service-level agreement, such as wavelengths, Ethernet or IP transit, rather than bare fiber.

6

Interconnection

The physical and logical exchange of traffic between networks, including meet-me-room cross-connects, peering links and wholesale access handoffs.

7

Peering and IXP

Peering is the exchange of traffic between networks, often settlement-free, while an internet exchange point (IXP) provides shared switching fabric for multiple networks to interconnect.

8

Wholesale carrier

An operator that sells capacity, dark fiber, backhaul, towers or access to other service providers rather than primarily to end users.

9

FTTH / FTTP

Fiber to the Home or Fiber to the Premises - a broadband architecture that runs fiber directly to a subscriber location, supporting high-speed symmetric services.

10

BEAD

Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program - a US state-administered grant program aimed at expanding high-speed internet in unserved and underserved locations.

11

MVNO

Mobile Virtual Network Operator - a wireless brand that leases radio access from a host mobile network operator instead of owning spectrum and cell sites.

12

Edge data center

A smaller data center placed close to users or network aggregation points to reduce latency for content, cloud and enterprise applications.

13

SASE

Secure Access Service Edge - a converged networking and security service model that combines SD-WAN, cloud security and policy enforcement for distributed users and branches.

14

PON

Passive Optical Network - a fiber access architecture that uses unpowered splitters to serve multiple premises from a central optical line terminal.