The idea that the mobile industry or wireless generally would become a driver for optical fiber transmission would have seemed laughable even a decade ago, but that is now the case as we enter the 5G era. Previously optical transmission, in keeping with backhaul generally, was seen as a black box utility that could be harvested on demand, offering effectively infinite capacity with the main constraint being the cost of digging to lay the fiber. Now at a time wireless capacity and performance is accelerating as millimeter wave spectrum becomes available and usable – admittedly with challenges – fiber has been heading towards a capacity crunch that can only be resolved through innovations in multiplexing and transmission techniques. In this…