WCA November 2018

Telecom news

has surged to 74 million, on the basis of large-scale deployments across countries including the United States, South Korea and China. Viavi said that, since the start of 2017, gigabit Internet services have been introduced in nine countries: Australia, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Malta, Monaco, Oman and Russia. From her review of the Viavi findings, Ms Hill reported that South Korea makes gig access available to 46.9 million people; Spain, 30.1 million people; and China, 20.7 million people. But, she observed, in terms of percentage of population coverage the picture can look different: Singapore offers gigabit services that cover 95 per cent of its population; South Korea, 95 per cent; and Moldova, 90 per cent. Ø Ø In a statement, Sameh Yamany, Viavi’s CTO, expressed “fasci- nation” at the push for gigabit Internet on the part of public and private companies, and even governments. But he added a note of caution. Whether concerning fibre, HFC, LTE – or, in the near future, 5G – Dr Yamany said: “The onus is on service providers to ensure that the hoped-for speeds and experience match consumer expectations, which requires a robust discipline of network monitoring, testing and troubleshooting.” At 25 Mbps, the USA “is not even close” to leading the world in high-speed Internet When the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on 8 th August opened its annual inquiry into whether high-speed Internet is being deployed to all Americans fast enough, one commissioner dissented from the majority finding. Jessica Rosenworcel asserted that the national minimum of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) is too slow.

The most recent public service announcement from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) does not refer to any of America’s most wanted criminals but instead issues a dire warning of the perils of the Internet of Things (IoT). As reported by Martyn Warwick of London-based TelecomTV , the announcement “Cyber actors use Internet of Things devices as proxies for anonymity and pursuit of malicious cyber activities” points up and reinforces what many in the global telecom industry have been saying for a long time – that the IoT is essentially, inherently, chronically insecure. It is wide open to potentially devastating cyberattacks that could have far-reaching national and international consequences for vital networks and systems. The FBI alert is very specific in its assessment of the cyber criminals who actively search for and compromise vulnerable IoT devices for use as proxies or intermediaries for Internet requests to route malicious traffic for computer network exploitation. IoT (“smart”) devices communicate with the Internet to send or receive data. Examples of targeted IoT devices include routers, wireless radio links, time clocks, audio/video streaming devices, Raspberry Pi computers, IP cameras, DVRs, satellite antenna equipment, smart garage door openers and network-attached storage devices. According to Mr Warwick: “It is generally accepted that sometime, somewhere, a huge and devastating cyber attack on IoT systems and networks will happen.” Among the nightmare scenarios are assaults that could compromise the safety of nuclear power stations; force the collapse of such national infrastructures as electricity, gas, water and hydrocarbon fuel networks; and attack banking networks and financial systems. So serious is the situation that research house IDC (Framingham, Massachusetts, USA) reported that the cybersecurity and physical safety concerns associated with IoT devices will force Global 2000 companies to increase IoT security spending 25 per cent by over the next two years. Another research company, Forrester (Cambridge, Massachusetts), found that spending on global cloud security solutions will reach $3.5 billion by 2021. That is an annual growth rate of 28 per cent. Wrote Mr Warwick: “Now that the G-Men are on the case perhaps the [telecom sector] will start to pay meaningful attention to the dangers.” (“FBI Warns of ‘Devastating’ Cyber Attacks on Iot Networks,” 7 th August) Now confirmed by the FBI: IoT security remains one of the most challenging security vulnerabilities to the telecom sector

Gigabit Internet service, including gig LTE, is expanding, with an especially marked increase reported over the past year Viavi Solutions (San Jose, California, USA) is a network test, measurement and assurance technology company that has been tracking gigabit service deployments since 2004 and launched its Gigabit Monitor tracking site in 2016. According to Viavi, global access to gigabit Internet services jumped nearly 40 per cent between May 2017 and July 2018. The latest data from Viavi indicates that more than 300 million people

in 49 countries now have access to gigabit Internet services; also that the USA offers the most gig services to the most people – some 64 million. As reported on 3 rd August by Kelly Hill, who covers the industry for RCR Wireless News , fibre is the most widely available form of gigabit Internet service, accounting for 90.4 per cent of these deployments. She noted Viavi’s disclosure that this includes a large volume of micro scale deployments, mainly in the USA where populations as small as 300 people are being served with gigabit Internet. Over the past few quarters, Viavi told RCR Wireless News , the number of people with access to gigabit LTE

Illustrations: BigStockPhoto.com • Artist: Asmati

42

Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2018

www.read-wca.com