WCA September 2015

Telecom news

into operation in February 2000 – is outdated and used only for voice transmissions. The eulaLink cable, scheduled for commissioning by 2017, will be built by a consortium led by Brazilian state-owned telecom infrastructure provider Telebras and the Spanish cable operator IslaLink. The declared aim of the initiative is to promote research, innovation and education, as well as business exchanges, by reducing connectivity costs and ensuring very high-capacity bandwidth. Ø On 10 th June, Investir au Cameroun reported that mobile operator Orange Cameroon had signed an agreement with the government at Yaoundé for the operation of the African Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable, slated for completion by the end of this year. The business journal quoted CEO Elisabeth Medou Bandang as saying that Cameroon’s third submarine cable – after the SAT3 and WACS cables – would enable Orange to manage growth in data usage in the country. While details were not forth- coming, it was previously reported that Yaoundé in March issued a call for expressions of interest (EoI) in the construction of a cable landing stage in Kribi and a 404-mile fibre optic branch to the ACE connecting point. TeleGeography noted that the 10,560-mile ACE high-speed cable, connecting the west coast of Africa with France, is in the second phase of its rollout to additional destinations on Africa’s Atlantic coast. The first phase, ended in December 2012, saw the network go live in 13 countries. A Wi-Fi antenna adapted from a standard fluorescent light tube could spell the end for “dead spots” Researchers at Malaysia’s Universiti Teknologi MARA have used ionised gas in a common fluorescent light tube to create an antenna for a Wi-Fi Internet router, the science news

Huawei in mid-June reaffirmed its European commitment by emphasising its partnerships with operators, car manufacturers, and others, and stressing Europe-based research and development. Editor Anne Morris of FierceWireless:Europe identified the China-based equipment vendor’s broader purpose: to help Europe establish a leadership position in future technological developments in business and industry. At its annual innovation day in Munich, Huawei announced a new alliance with Britain’s Vodafone to develop cloud-based and Internet of Things (IoT) services for enterprises. Ms Morris also reported Huawei as underscoring existing alliances with other large operators including BT and Deutsche Telekom; car manufacturers such as Audi; IT specialists including SAP; research organisations such as Germany’s Frauenhofer Institute; and projects supported by the European Commission, such as Horizon 2020. “Europe is one of most important markets for Huawei outside China,” said William Xu, the company’s chief strategy marketing officer. He added that Europe “is at the frontier” of the vendor’s innovation work and collaboration with partners. Huawei has already established 19 joint innovation centres with its partners in the region, as well as 18 R&D centres of its own in eight European countries. Ms Morris wrote: “Both Huawei and Deutsche Telekom also said they believe Europe is leading the way to what is being termed ‘Industry 4.0’ – a German concept that essentially refers to the transformation of industry through new technology and ‘digitisation.’” (“Huawei Vows To Put Europe In Vanguard For New Digital Industrial Era,” 17 th June). Dieter Wegener of the German standards organisations VDE and DKE explains Industry 4.0 as an effort to bring what is already happening in the consumer world to the industrial and business world. Specifically, he told FierceWireless:Europe , to transform products into services and to make use of wireless sensors, cloud-based services, and the IoT to “digitise the value chain.” Although in Ms Morris’s view Industry 4.0 “is still very much a vision,” she reported the insistence of leading proponents of the concept that Europe take the lead here. Even as US companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook are shaping the consumer world and driving its consumption of digital services and content, Europe is seen as well positioned to lead the charge as business and industry go through a similar revolution. Ø Mr Xu summarised what he termed a 1-2-1 strategy for Industry 4.0, with a notable contribution from Huawei. “The first ‘1’ refers to a single unified IoT platform. The ‘2’ refers to two access modes – wired and wireless – via industrial switches, industrial Wi-Fi, or eLTE. The last ‘1’ refers to LiteOS, Huawei’s own IoT operating system.” With an ambitious plan to bring consumer-world digital services to industry and business, Huawei renews its fealty to Europe

Two announced subsea fibre optic projects will establish links between Europe and Latin America, and Africa and Europe Ø The European Commission has said it plans to invest some $28 million in a submarine fibre optic cable, tentatively named eulaLink, which will link Lisbon, Portugal, with Fortaleza, Brazil. As reported by TeleGeography (12 th June), the

EC disclosed that its participation is by way of the Building Europe Link to Latin America (BELLA) project spearheaded by European research network DANTE and its Latin American counterpart RedCLARA. The EC noted that Latin America currently relies on undersea cables to the USA to transmit almost all (85 to 90 per cent) of its communications with Europe. The sole existing cable between Latin America and Europe – the 5,280-mile Atlantis-2, which went

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2015

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