Roaming data no longer paid the shocking sums we used to get used to last summer. The drop in prices led to a real explosion of data in Europe. The use of roaming data grew by as much as 800 per cent.

According to BISC measurements, the number of global LTE data traffic doubled last year. The same growth is expected by the company this year.

According to the latest statistics, LTE services are provided by 562 operators. During the year, the number of 4G operators grew by one quarter.

In Europe, the EU decision stopped roaming roaming in June. As a result, European tourists used 600-800 percent more data than the previous year.

Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/7464-roaming-datan-maara-rajahti-viime-kesana

The total value of major data center-oriented M&A deals that closed in 2017 reached $20 billion, surpassing the combined total for 2015 and 2016, according to new data from Synergy Research Group. There was an average of nearly one key M&A deal closed weekly through 2017. According to Synergy, there are four additional deals with a $2.6 billion total value as 2018 begins, which have been agreed but have yet to be closed.

There were 12 deals valued in the $100 million to $1 billion range, and 31 deals valued at as much as $100 million each, says the market research firm.

Certifying performance helps address industry concerns about degrading performance issues associated with patch cords

Patch cords are considered by the industry as the weakest element in a communications cabling system due to the variance in patch cord performance, resulting from inferior or sub-standard connectors, materials, cable assembly or manufacturing process. Yet, the performance of a patch cord is crucial to a computer network’s speed and performance. An empirical study conducted by Communications Cable & Connectivity Association (CCCA) found a high failure rate in electrical performance of patch cords*.

Numerous states say they’ll be crafting their own net neutrality protections in the wake of the FCC’s recent vote to dismantle the rules. ISPs of course predicted this, which is why Comcast and Verizon successfully lobbied the FCC to include provisions in its “Restoring Internet Freedom” order that bans states from protecting consumers from privacy and net neutrality violations, or other bad behavior by incumbent ISPs. In ISP lobbying land, stopping states from writing protectionist law is an assault on “states rights,” but when states actually try to help consumers you’ll note the concern for states rights magically disappears.

Regardless, New York State, California and Washington have all indicated that they will attempt to test the FCC’s state preemption authority on this front in the new year by crafting their own net neutrality legislation.

TECH
Startups Seek Tech Solution to Net Neutrality Repeal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/startups-seek-tech-solution-to-net-neutrality-repeal-1514383200

From VPNs to mesh networks, efforts to find an alternative route to internet access are gaining ground in Silicon Valley

Daniela Perdomo is concerned about the power of U.S. telecom giants that stand to gain from the repeal of “net neutrality” rules. Her company offers a way around them: A $90 antenna that lets users send messages without cellular service or Wi-Fi.

Ms. Perdomo is among the entrepreneurs whose vision for an alternative route to internet access is finding takers in Silicon Valley, where tech types were rattled by a recent government decision to overturn rules that required big internet providers to treat all traffic equally.

“Society requires connectivity to function and to advance but we are leaving telecommunications in the hands of a few large corporations,” Ms. Perdomo said. “The lack of a choice is a problem.”

“Net neutrality has been killed at the behest of large carriers and network companies,”

“Technology needs to figure out a way to increase competition.”

One way might be through virtual private networks

Some VPNs help users shield their physical location and browsing patterns from internet service providers or governments,

“We have been fighting this net neutrality battle in other countries over the last five years,” said David Gorodyansky, chief executive of AnchorFree Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif., startup that provides VPN service Hotspot Shield. “We are going to do the same in the U.S.”

Americans could use a service like Hotspot Shield to cloak their digital whereabouts from broadband providers. In theory, that would make it harder for telecom companies such as AT&T Inc. or Verizon Communications Inc. to slow down a site or completely block users from viewing it.

One problem with VPNs is speed. The online services most in danger of being blocked or throttled include video-streaming sites and other high-bandwidth applications, which generally take longer to load when connecting through a VPN.

A mesh network may be another alternative to traditional internet access. Instead of accessing the internet through one provider, users of a mesh network pull bits of information from many different nodes—such as phones, laptops and antennas—around them, and often serve as a node themselves.

That is the idea behind Ms. Perdomo’s company goTenna Inc., which makes a strap-on antenna the size of a smartphone that can connect with sister devices several miles away using a radio signal. The devices sync to phones for a connection strong enough to send encrypted texts and GPS coordinates between devices.

As more antennas are added to the network, the messages can be sent over distances surpassing 4 miles. Rather than Wi-Fi or cellular signal, goTenna relies on publicly available radio frequencies.

Another vision of mesh networks is taking shape in Porto, Portugal, where startup Veniam worked with city officials to install wireless sensors on moving vehicles, including buses and garbage trucks. The vehicles connect to Wi-Fi hot spots and to each other to create an internet network that reaches more people in more places.

Today, AT&T announced that all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia have officially signed on to FirstNet, a government program operated by AT&T to provide universal emergency response communications across the country.

This is a major win for AT&T, which officially won the FirstNet contract this past March. The contract stipulated that AT&T would manage the network for 25 years, and the company committed to spending $40 billion to manage and operate the network. In exchange, the company would receive 20 MHz of critical wireless spectrum from the FCC, as well as payments from the government totaling $6.5 billion for the initial network rollout.

The true win for AT&T though is in the actual spectrum itself, which is in the 700 Mhz band commonly used for LTE signals. While the FirstNet spectrum is prioritized for first responders, it also can be used for consumer wireless applications when an emergency is not taking place

For AT&T, the victory provides a new source of revenue from local police and fire departments, who will presumably come to rely on FirstNet for their emergency communications. It also gets a serious boost in its spectrum, along with free cash from taxpayers.

At the Mobile World Congress, ICFO exhibited a prototype of a graphene-based integrated transceiver that could significantly reduce the power consumption of data centers, shrink their footprint, and increase their bandwidth. This has since led mobile companies such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Alcatel to support to ICFO’s research through their participation in the European Union’s US $1 billion research effort in all things graphene, known as the Graphene Flagship.

“We’re building an integrated transceiver fully packaged with 100-gigabyte-per-second data transfer,” said Frank Koppens, the leader of the quantum nano-optoelectronic group at ICFO, when we spoke at his offices at the ICFO’s modern facilities. “The plan is—together with the Graphene Flagship—to have a prototype in about two and a half years that will beat existing technologies.”

Koppens argues that these low-power, integrated photonic devices are required for the telecommunication industry’s transition to 5G, the next mobile telecommunications standard.

“This is a really big issue,” said Koppens. “5G cannot just scale. Some new technology is needed. And that’s why we have several companies in the Graphene Flagship that are putting a lot of pressure on us to address this issue.”

This article discusses how communications provider SaskTel is utilizing real-time spectrum analyzers to track down interference from European DECT wireless handsets.

in general, 100M over fiber is not compatible with 1G over fiber. There exist combined SFPs that support both 100BASE-FX and 1000BASE-SX, but they are not often used because they cost as much or more then one 100BASE-FX and one 1000BASE-SX transceiver together.

100BASE-FX uses the same fiber cables as 1000BASE-SX (multi-mode fiber, MMF). You cannot passively convert between different fiber types