Telecom operators struggle to keep pace with soaring increasingly volatile traffic traversing their network. New video services are setting busy-hour internet on a steep growth curve reaching 36 % compound annual growth rate (CAGR) vastly outpacing the average traffic rides on a hefty 25 % CAGR. Operators plan network capacity according to peak rates rather than average rates, wastefully overprovisioning their networks to accommodate the high peak-to-average ratios. Equipment manufacturers and system vendors are well underway in developing high speed products with 64 Gbaud and 128 Gbaud portofolio, while teleco operators struggle with reduced profitability and suppressed margins, as end users demand higher bandwidth and higher quality of service at the same price. Consent among telecos and equipment and system vendors are needed to make network more efficient and dynamic. Along with programmability enabled by the software defined network (SDN), the recently introduced concept of slice-ability can bring the cost reduction in CAPEX and OPEX well exceeding 30 %, by employing flexi-grid transponders and reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) components. This is where QAMeleon steps in aiming to deliver a new generation of photonic devices towards scaling core and metro networks exceeding to the next decade. At the transponder side, QAMeleon will develop transceiver components enabling the switch to 128 Gbaud and bringing significant savings in footprint (13 ×), energy/bit (10 ×) and cost/bit (> 4.3×). At the ROADM side, QAMeleon will develop large-scale flex-grid wavelength-selective-switches (1×24 WSS) and transponder aggregators (8×24 TPA) reducing footprint and cost/port by more than 40 % and 28 % respectively, with energy savings per ROADM node reaching 4×. In addition, to address the emerging  energy needs of 5G network backhaul and datacenter interconnect (DCI) metro-access networks where dynamicity is pivotal, QAMeleon will develop an integrated flex-grid 1×4 WSS with nanosecond-scale switching time, scalable to large channel counts covering the whole C-band, bringing reduction of footprint, energy consumption and cost by 20 %, 11.5 % and 36 % respectively. The developed devices will be validated in a scalable lab and field trial demonstrators.