There is a very old saying that “forecasting is very difficult, particularly of the future”. Smarter people than me have been made fools by their forecasts. Having said that, two trends seem to make 2015 a transition year. Firstly, traditional telecom players such as AT&T and Verizon are looking to clamp down on capital expenditures in 2015. Secondly, the large web players such as Google, Amazon.com and Facebook are looking to deploy more optical infrastructure. However, the web players needs and purchasing criteria will be very different than the telcos. How will Ciena, Alcatel-Lucent, Fujitsu and Huawei adapt? This year may well be a critical one for the optical vendors.