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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2017
Telecomnews
By a hair’s-breadth,
security-minded
consumers trust their
device makers over their
telecom providers
The Accenture findings summarised
above (“Comprehensive global
survey”) also disclose that many
consumers remain uneasy about
securing their personal data, much
of which is housed in smartphones
or in the cloud. Nearly nine in ten
respondents (87 per cent) said they
are concerned about the security of
financial transactions such as online
purchases. Some 89 per cent are
fearful that unauthorised companies
or systems could gain access to their
financial information.
The encouraging news for smartphone
manufacturers is that consumers
trust device manufacturers with
their personal data more than they
trust telecom providers, banks and
search-engines.
More than one-third (37 per cent) said
they trust device manufacturers, up
from 31 per cent last year. By contrast,
36 per cent trust telecom providers
with their data – a drop from 42 per
cent last year; and only 13 per cent
trust search engine providers, down
from 23 per cent last year.
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
Ø The “Right to Disconnect”
legislation that came into effect
in France on 1st January requires
companies and organisations
with more than 50 employees
to guarantee “as a basic human
right” that in the evenings, over
weekends, and at various other
after-hours times, workers
shall not be contacted by their
employers by either email or fixed/
mobile telephone. Further, staff
have the right to switch off their
mobile devices when they leave
the workplace and not turn them
on again until their return.
As noted by Martyn Warwick of
TelecomTV (London), while France
is in the vanguard in defining and
ensuring off-duty time, similar
policies have been adopted by
companies in other countries.
Volkswagen, of Germany, has
not since 2011 sent emails to its
workforce between 6.15pm and
7am on workdays. Weekends and
holidays are also total black-out
periods for VW employees.
Ø The European Commission is
working on much stricter rules
covering the use of computer data
code in the form of cookies – the
small, often encrypted text files,
located in browser directories,
that gather information for the
website’s server. As reported
by Advanced Television (10th
January), the proposal is not
new, but the French business
newspaper Les Echoes says
the push for a rules change is
gathering steam.
The current “opt-in” mode obliges
website browsers to click to
accept cookies. The EC would
move them into “no tracking”
mode by default. Two Europe-wide
options for the change are
available to the EC: regulation,
which would afford little room for
individual countries to adapt the
new rules; and directive, allowing
greater flexibility.
Ø Cisco Systems and Juniper
Networks (both of the USA),
Huawei Technologies (Chinese),
and Nokia (Finnish) together
generate close to 86 per cent of
worldwide revenue from sales
of routers and carrier Ethernet
switches, IHS Markit reports.
Respondents to the London-
based research company’s latest
Router and Switch Survey said
that these vendors are the market
leaders in 100 Gigabit Ethernet,
virtual routers, and IP data centre
interconnect technology.
As noted by Sean Buckley of
FierceTelecom (3rd January),
Michael Howard, senior research
director and advisor for carrier
networks at IHS Markit, said that
the quartet of vendors forms
“a top tier separated by a wide
margin from other router and
switch vendors.”
Ø Cooperative intelligent transport
systems (ITS) are currently being
tested for the sharing of images
between connected vehicles
on a road (so that the driver
in the trailing vehicle can “see
through” the vehicle ahead) and
timely notification of a potential
emergency.
On 4th January, Ericsson (of
Sweden) and Orange (of France)
and the French automotive
manufacturer PSA Group
announced their “Towards 5G”
connected car partnership for
leveraging 4G to 5G technology to
address ITS and other connected
vehicle requisites.
The partnership is focused
on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and
vehicle-to-everything (V2X) archit-
ecture, as well as the technologies
required to deploy real-time ITS
and connected vehicle services.
Initial tests will use an end-to-end
architecture system based on
LTE technology before evolving to
LTE-V and 5G technologies.
Ø In its second annual cloud
communications survey, No Jitter
Research (Oak Brook, Illinois)
found continued growth in the
USA in the use of cloud-hosted
services.
The results for 2016 disclose
that two-thirds of respondents
already using cloud-hosted com-
munications intend to bring on
additional services over the
ensuing 12 months. Additionally,
year-over-year comparisons by
the company, which specialises
in enterprise communications,
show rising interest in and
use of cloud communications
in four particular functional
areas: cloud PBX, mobile
applications like video calling
and team collaboration, unified
communications, and contact
centre services.
Ø Huawei on 16th December
announced that Huawei Marine
and Ooredoo Maldives had
inaugurated the Nationwide
Submarine Cable system in the
Maldives.
The project is part of Ooredoo’s
programme for providing high-
speed broadband services to
all the islands of the archipelago
nation off the west coast of
India.
With design capacity of up to
3.2Tbps and utilising Huawei
Marine’s 100G technology, the
system stretches across 746
miles and connects the six main
islands.