This text summarizes the invited papers presented at the International Symposium on New Trends in Optical Soliton Transmission Systems held in Kyoto, Japan in the fall of 1997. The symposium is the second of the series and is considered to be the most representative symposium on the use of optical solitons for ultrafast communications. In particular, this symposium focuses on the newly developed technologies of dispersion management to improve soliton transmission capabilities. Studies of properties of new solitons that appear in fibres with periodic variation of dispersion are also presented.