Huawei Technologies is piloting its 4K video streaming solution in South Africa. A bundled offering from Huawei and Telkom offers 4K video streaming services over a fibre connection to residents of 156 apartments in the Amber Elite building, Sandton, Johannesburg. Telkom’s deployment of 100mbps FTTH means that residents can watch UHD (Ultra-High Definition) TV. MTN and Ericsson are currently also undertaking 5G trials in South Africa.
Market reviews by the UK telecoms regulator should result in Openreach (BT) adopting more rigid Quality of Service standards, opening cable ducts to other ISPs and significantly lowering the price of 40Mbps FTTC broadband lines, bringing rates closer to copper broadband products. Openreach can already cover some 90% of 10 UK premises with FTTC, which is moving towards universal coverage.
Photo by Jim Linwood
At the 2018, Mobile World Congress, Sudatel Telecom Group and Liquid Telecom signed a memorandum of understanding to build new FTTH networks across Sudan, boosting broadband speeds across the country. Today, homes and businesses in Sudan largely depend on wireless networks. Liquid Telecom’s experience in high-speed networks will help Sudatel build FTTH networks using the latest technologies.
The most recent FTTH Council Europe market panorama study shows a 20.4% increase in FTTH/B subscribers in Europe since September 2016. The number of FTTH and FTTB (fibre to the building) subscribers in Europe was at 5.1 million in the EU39. The number of homes passed increased to more than 148 million, a growth of 16% compared to September 2016.
Openreach UK rolling out fibre broadband to rural areas with drones. These are laying fibre along routes that would have otherwise been difficult to access. As a result, the village of Pontfadog in Wales, currently has access to full Fibre-to-the-Premises. Residents are offered packages from 38 Mbps up to 300 Mbps.
“Had we tried to lay the cable using standard methods, even if it were possible, this process would have taken days, but in the event it took us less than an hour,” said Andy Whale, Openreach’s Chief Engineer. “All this means we can now deliver high-speed broadband in situations where traditionally it’s been impossible for any business or partnership to justify the work.”
NBN Co, the company building Australia's National Broadband Network, has signed R&D partnership agreements with the University of Melbourne (UoM) and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Focus areas include research and development (R&D) of technologies such as robotics, IoT, data analytics and visualisation for customer experience, AI, wireless technologies and smart cities.
When completed in 2020, the government-owned wholesale network will ensure affordable high speed broadband for all Australians. Prysmian has been a key partner to this landmark project from the outset, supplying optical and metallic cables.
Figures from state statistics bureau IBGE show that over 70 percent of Brazilian households had internet access in 2017. That’s 49.2 million households, a significant increase from 44 million (63.6%) in 2016.
92.7 percent of households had at least one person with a mobile phone line, up from 92.3 percent in 2016. 69 percent of those polled said they connected to the internet through a smartphone, up from 60.3 percent in 2016.
The Fiber Broadband Association recently held its 2018 regional conference at Detroit’s Greektown Casino-Hotel. This edition of the USA’s leading conference on broadband technologies for communities focused on how Detroit has invested in fibre broadband infrastructure to help spur economic and technological growth throughout the city and how to get fibre deployed. The value proposition of building gigabit networks was explored, as well as best practices for managing implementation.
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