Both public and private innovation projects are targeting the design,
prototyping and demonstration of a novel end-to-end integrated packet-optical
transport architecture based on Multi-Band (MB) optical transmission and
switching networks. Essentially, MB is expected to be the next technological
evolution to deal with the traffic demand and service requirements of 5G mobile
networks, and beyond, in the most cost-effective manner. Thanks to MB
transmission, classical telco architectures segmented into hierarchical levels
and domains can move forward toward an optical network continuum, where edge
access nodes are all-optically interconnected with top-hierarchical nodes,
interfacing Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and Internet Exchange Points (IXP).
This article overviews the technological challenges and innovation requirements
to enable such an architectural shift of telco networks both from a data and
control and management planes