The invention relates to an intelligent network element for optical networks, comprising: at least one back-plane with a plurality of electrical transmission lines running across the back-plane and a plurality of electrical terminals connected to the transmission lines; a plurality of line-card slices having electrical terminals, each line-card slice being attached to the back-plane directly or in the form of a plug-in module such, that the electrical terminals of the line-card slice are electrically connected to selected ones of the terminals of the back-plane, with at least one of the line-card slices comprising at least one optical receiver for receiving of optical signals from the network and at least one opto-electrical converter integrated in or optically connected to the optical receiver with electrical terminals, and at least one of the line-card slices comprising at least one optical transmitter for transmitting of optical signals to the network and at least one electro-optical converter integrated in or optically connected to the optical transmitter with electrical terminals; various or all of the said electrical terminals are implemented in form of switch terminals that provide selected and reconfigurable electrical interconnections among various of the at least one receiver, transmitter and/or converter.