The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada has awarded McGill University of Montreal and its project partners a five-year, $7 million grant to develop a next-generation all-photonic fiber optic telecommunications network. Key to the success of the Agile All-Photonic Networks project is the production of an efficient all-photonic switch that will operate at high speeds and handle large volumes of broadband communications.

The optoelectronic switching currently used in networks is slow, is costly and requires high power. Network architects and component specialists will work to optimize the photonic switching and to enable "agility," or the ability to perform time-domain multiplexing to allocate bandwidth to traffic flow as demand varies.

The research network comprises five universities, three federal research laboratories and seven private companies, all in Canada.