WCA March 2017

Telecom news

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 1 st 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 (10 th 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 (3 rd 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 4 th 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 16 th 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.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2017