wiredInUSA January 2020

New bus conforms to ASi-5

Fiber acquisition

image: LeoniAG

Altice Europe’s French fiber venture, SFR FTTH, plans to acquire the infrastructure operator Covage. The one billion euro deal has been agreed with the private equity firm Partners Group and Cube Infrastructure Fund, the operator’s twomain shareholders. Allianz Capital Partners (ACP), AXA Investment Managers and Canadian investment firm Omers Infrastructure, who own a combined 49.99 percent stake in SFR FTTH, will fund the deal with a cash equity contribution. The same amount will come from Altice, and a remaining €70 million will be raised from debt. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2020. Altice said that Covage plans to reach an FTTP footprint of 2.4 million French premises in the coming years, including the 800,000 homes and businesses already covered by the operator’s infrastructure. In comparison, SFR FTTH has so far passed 1.7 million premises, committing to a footprint of 5.4 million overall. The merger with Covage will bring this total to eight million over the next three to four years, including the 2.5 million already built.

Leoni aims to meet demand for smooth data and energy transfer with its latest bus series for fieldbus ethernet, conforming to ASi-5 standards. With two wires, but only one cable, the actuator sensor interface system transfers data and energy at the same time, connecting actuators and lower-level sensors to the higher-level ethernet-based layer. At the same time, the profiled design of the ASi-5 allows easy and flexible installation, with no polarity reversal. The freely selectable topology simplifies system expansion with full backward compatibility. Transmission quality can be checked at any time via the integrated IO-Link diagnostic channel, which transmits diagnostic data in parallel to the process data. To conform to the new ASi-5 standards, the shuttle bus of up to 96 users can be used at the same time, providing 96 x 16 safe inputs and outputs. A data width of 16 bits is transferred to four times shorter cycle times of 1.2ms. The ASi-5 requires no plug-in connection for data and energy transfer, because piercing technology allows components to be easily exchanged or moved without effort and without complex calculations. Installation is flexible and lowers engineering costs.

wiredInUSA January 2020

26