MEMS vs Liquid Crystal OCS:

MEMS switches reflect light off of microscopic mirrors while liquid crystal switches split light before steering them through a medium. This results in several significant tradeoffs.

1. MEMS switches have lower insertion loss

2. MEMS switches have a larger installed base

3. Liquid crystal has faster switching

4. Liquid crystal has higher reliability

But each tradeoff is not equally important. I expect MEMS to take a majority share of OCS deployments.

Read more about OCS in the most comprehensive yet approachable primer below! (I wrote it)