The UK government has announced a plan to invest £100m ($156m) to create ten ‘super-connected’ cities equipped with high-speed broadband in the country. The announcement was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne in his Autumn Statement and forms part of a general £5bn increase in infrastructure spending, in an attempt to boost the UK’s stalling economy.
Canadian telco MTS Allstream has deployed optical technology from US firm Ciena in order to upgrade its national optical fibre transmission network to support 100Gbps data transport.
US satellite pay TV broadcaster Dish networks has applied for the trademark ‘Ollo’ as a brand name for its planned wireless LTE-Advanced based services.
We speak to Phan Thao Nguyen, Deputy Chief Information Officer at Vietnam Posts & Telecommunications Group (VNPT), which won the ‘Changing Lives Award’ at this year’s Broadband InfoVision Awards for its Broadband Garden project.
We speak to Dr. XiPeng Xiao, Head of Chief Engineer Office for Network Product Line at Huawei Europe, which won the category ‘Broadband Innovation of the Year’ at this year’s Broadband Infovision Awards for its 200G line card.
We speak to Jane Chen, Senior Vice President at ZTE Corporation, which won the category ‘Core and Metro Network Innovation and Afvances’ at this year’s Broadband InfoVision Awards.
French telco Bouygues Telecom has selected Alcatel-Lucent to take a lead role in transforming its broadband network into a single IP-based infrastructure that can support video, high-speed internet and voice services.
Sylvan Thevanot, marketing director for UK network provider Everything Everywhere has called on all fixed line and mobile operators to get their networks in order in time for the London Olympics due to the held in the UK capital during July and August 2012.
A raft of new names are poised to enter the UK’s super-fast broadband market and challenge incumbent BT by building alternative fibre-based networks, according to UK analyst firm Point Topic.
China Unicom has selected Alcatel-Lucent as its largest supplier for the planned expansion of its broadband access network using GPON technology across 29 provinces.
UK incumbent BT may well extend the life of its copper broadband network rather than switch to fibre for faster broadband. Lucy Dimes, chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent UK and Ireland told a forum in London last week that vectoring broadband technology (VDSL) could extend the life of copper technology to provide speeds of up to 100Mbps, ZDnet has reported.
Croatian incumbent T-Hrvatski Telekom has said that it is locked in a stalemate with the country’s regulator over fibre broadband, which is hindering the country’s economy. The operator added that it cannot see a resolution in the near future to the stand-off, which has already dragged on for two years.
Global public wifi hotspot numbers are set to grow from 1.3 million in 2011, to 5.8 million by 2015, marking a 350 per cent increase, according to research published by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), and compiled by Informa. The findings from the WBA, which is the industry association focused on driving next generation wifi, also revealed that more than half – 58 per cent – of operators believe wifi hotspots are either “very important” or “crucial” to their customers’ experience, in order to offload busy mobile broadband networks and to provide a value-added services.
Dutch telco KPN has announced a number of measures designed to strengthen its involvement in Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks in the Netherlands, including the acquisition of four fibre service providers.
We speak to Wesley Ng, principal designer of the Stargazr IPTV user interface from Hong Kong telco PCCW Media, which won the category “Broadband Home: Appliances, Devices, Home Networks & Services” at this year’s Broadband InfoVision Awards.
We speak to Iain Davidson, Business Development Manager (EMEA) at US-headquartered firm Freescale Semiconductor, which won the category ‘Enabling Silicon and Component-Level Technologies’ at this year’s Broadband InfoVision Awards for its Secure Broadband Gateway solutions.
Ericsson has said that it increased its market share in mobile infrastructure by four per cent in the past six months, which means it has twice as large a slice of the market as its nearest rival, Huawei. The firm has increased its market share from 32 per cent in May 2011 to today’s estimated 36 per cent, it said.
UK firm CityFibre Holdings has appointed Macquarie Capital to act as financial advisor on its next stage of capital formation, as it gets ready to build fibre networks across the country that will eventually connect 1mn homes and 50,000 businesses.
Despite falling prices, consumers living in emerging markets are still paying far more for broadband than their mature market counterparts, putting it completely out of reach for the majority of them, according to research firm Ovum.
Finnish handset vendor Nokia has teamed up with wifi network operator Spectrum Interactive and location based media firm Selective Media, to trial a free wifi offering on the streets of London, UK.
