IT Tech Pulse Exclusive Interview with Christoph Glingener, CEO of Adtran

Christoph Glingener, CEO of Adtran, discusses how AI, optical networking, security, digital sovereignty and quantum readiness are reshaping the infrastructure landscape.

Looking back at your career across Siemens, Marconi, ADVA and Adtran, and one of the largest networking mergers in the industry, which moment most reshaped how you lead technology and engineering teams?

• Technology and organizations are constantly evolving – the ability to lead through change is one of the most important lessons from my career.
• The most formative moments were periods where major technological shifts required teams to rethink established approaches. These days AI is quickly changing everything.
• Strong engineering teams need a clear vision, trust and the freedom to make decisions.
• Good leadership means creating clarity in complex situations and giving people the confidence to act.
• Technology moves fast, but the principles of good leadership remain align people around a common goal, enable them to innovate and keep a long-term perspective.

Optical networking has evolved from a way to expand bandwidth into a strategic layer underpinning AI, cloud and sovereignty. How do you see the importance of your industry and technology today?

• Optical networking has become critical infrastructure – it is no longer simply about increasing bandwidth.
• AI and cloud are dramatically increasing requirements for capacity, scalability, efficiency and reliability.
• At the same time, security and digital sovereignty have moved from secondary considerations to core infrastructure requirements.
• Networks need to be fast and scalable, but also secure, resilient and trustworthy.
• We need to design infrastructure today with tomorrow’s requirements in mind – including the transition to quantum-secure technologies.
• Performance, security and sovereignty need to be addressed together rather than as separate layers of the infrastructure.

SAP recently deployed BSI-approved Layer 1 encryption across German data centers. What does this signal about trust, data sovereignty and infrastructure-level security?

• Security and sovereignty increasingly need to be built directly into the infrastructure.
• Protecting critical data cannot rely solely on applications or higher network layers.
• Layer 1 encryption adds an additional level of protection for data in transit without requiring changes to applications.
• BSI-approved encryption demonstrates the importance of independently verifiable security standards.
• This is part of a broader shift: organizations are asking not only where their data is stored, but how it is protected while moving through the infrastructure.
• The same principle applies to the transition toward quantum-secure communications: organizations need to start preparing and migrating now, rather than waiting until the threat becomes immediate.
• Sovereignty ultimately means having control and confidence across the entire infrastructure.

At OFC 2026, probably the world’s most important optical communications conference, Adtran promoted three themes: Powering AI infrastructure, Protecting critical infrastructure, and Transforming telco infrastructure. AI infrastructure growth was certainly the hottest topic, but also security and sovereignity. Why prioritize governed data-sharing architecture and sovereignty alongside performance?

• AI is increasing both the volume of data and the need to access and exchange it across different environments.
• More data sharing creates stronger requirements for governance, security and sovereignty.
• Openness and innovation cannot come at the expense of control and trust.
• The goal is to make data accessible and useful while maintaining control over how and where it is shared.
• Future infrastructure therefore needs to combine performance with openness, governance and security.
• This is particularly important as AI accelerates the movement of data across increasingly distributed infrastructure.

AI workloads are pushing data centers toward unprecedented power and bandwidth demands. How is Adtran rethinking optical transport, access networks and automation?

• AI is fundamentally changing network requirements – particularly bandwidth, latency, scalability and traffic patterns.
• Optical networking is becoming a critical enabler of AI infrastructure.
• Energy efficiency is increasingly important as compute and data requirements continue to grow.
• Automation is essential for managing complexity and adapting infrastructure dynamically.
• Security also needs to evolve alongside the infrastructure: networks being deployed today must be prepared for the security requirements of tomorrow, including quantum-safe technologies.
• The combination of optical transport, access and automation enables a more holistic approach to building scalable, efficient and secure AI infrastructure.

Looking five years ahead, which shifts in optical networking, edge computing, automation and quantum-secure infrastructure will most disrupt network design?

• AI will continue to fundamentally reshape network architecture, traffic patterns and infrastructure requirements.
• Networks will become increasingly, automated, self-aware and intelligent.
• Edge computing will push connectivity and processing closer to where data is generated and consumed.
• Digital sovereignty and infrastructure security will become even more important design criteria.
• Quantum security is not a “five years from now” topic. The transition has started and needs to accelerate.
• Organizations cannot wait until quantum computers are capable of breaking today’s encryption before acting – replacing infrastructure and security mechanisms takes time.
• Networks and security architectures being designed today need to support the transition to quantum-safe / post-quantum solutions.
• The key challenge is not simply adopting a new security technology but ensuring that the entire infrastructure can evolve as standards and threats change.
• The winners will be organizations that build flexibility and quantum readiness into their infrastructure now.

For CIOs, network architects and engineering leaders navigating AI infrastructure, sovereignty and rapid change, what leadership principle guides your teams through uncertainty?

• Keep complexity manageable and create clear priorities.
• Combine a long-term technology perspective with the ability to act decisively today.
• Do not wait for uncertainty to disappear before taking action – particularly when infrastructure decisions have long lifecycles.
• Teams need trust and autonomy to make decisions even when not all information is available.
• Encourage continuous learning and a willingness to challenge established assumptions.
• A key leadership principle is to prepare for major technology shifts before they become urgent.
• Technology leadership means balancing today’s business needs with the infrastructure requirements of the next decade.

Why Adtran? What makes Adtran’s approach different in today’s changing network infrastructure landscape?

• Adtran’s broad expertise across fiber access, optical transport and network security provides an end-to-end perspective on infrastructure.
• Connectivity, performance and security can no longer be considered in isolation.
• This broader perspective becomes increasingly important as the industry responds to deglobalization and changing supply chains.
• Organizations need to reduce dependencies on high-risk vendors and build greater supply chain resilience.
• A strong and trusted technology ecosystem is becoming increasingly important – customers need partners they can rely on for the long term.
• Adtran’s combination of technologies and expertise helps customers build infrastructure that is scalable, secure, resilient and adaptable.
• This also includes preparing networks for long-term security requirements such as quantum-safe technologies.
• Ultimately, the goal is not simply to optimize individual network layers, but to provide a trusted ecosystem and infrastructure foundation that customers can rely on over its entire lifecycle.

Thank you, Christoph Glingener, for taking the time to share your insights with us.

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