Every operator on the planet should have a Chief Fiber Officer. That’s how important this flavor of network infrastructure is and will continue to be for service providers, according to Fernando Villarruel, Chief Architect of MSO Practice at Ciena. This was a contentious comment to throw out at a cable-centric event, speaking at the latest Cable Next-Gen Digital Symposium, but not a single neighboring panelist contended Villaruel’s advice. Not Cox Communications, not Spectrum Enterprise, and especially not Altice USA, the most aggressive fiber network infrastructure builder of the three operators. “I don’t look at fiber as the passive thing, I look at fiber as an active component of the network. As bandwidth transitions, the optical componentry that makes up the…