US public housing has become infamous for it’s poor quality, underfunding and mismanagement resulting in tenants living in crumbling buildings with billions in repair backlogs, whilst Americans usually see it as the last resort for those with no other options. Now a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission is going to ease one part of the puzzle for those living and working in apartments…

US public housing has become infamous for it’s poor quality, underfunding and mismanagement resulting in tenants living in crumbling buildings with billions in repair backlogs, whilst Americans usually see it as the last resort for those with no other options.

Now a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission is going to ease one part of the puzzle for those living and working in apartments, public housing, office buildings, and other multi-tenant buildings, by enhancing broadband competition. This is a crucial part of the move towards a more connected America, prohibiting broadband providers from keeping competitive providers out of buildings – typically via revenue sharing agreements with building owners – and making any information about marketing deals readily (and clearly) available.

Jessica Rosenworcel, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said in a statement “One third of this country live in multi-tenant buildings where there often is only one choice for a broadband provider, and no ability to shop for a better deal,”

An extension to the ruling covers the wiring inside the building, prohibiting so-called sale-and-leaseback arrangements that block competitive access to alternative providers, meaning that in many multi-tenant environments already existing coaxial networks can be used by competitive providers rather than having to install expensive and labour-intensive fibre to the building.

One company that sees the advantage of this is InCoax Networks who provides fibre access extension technology which can be leveraged to enhance the capabilities of existing networks.

InCoax Head of Marketing, Sales and Product Management Helge Tiainen said “The FCC’s ruling will help open up the choice of broadband providers to empower millions of US tenants in their multi-tenant environments and lessen the barriers of broadband competition,”

“By reusing existing in-building infrastructure for broadband access, it can address the complexities that operators face when looking to bring connectivity to existing apartments and office buildings.”

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This week, Audi of America and Verizon have announced a new partnership, aiming to use Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband connectivity within Audi vehicles to enable augmented mobile services and new driving-assistance features, paving the way for the automated vehicles of the future.
According to Verizon, embedding 5G connectivity capabilities within the vehicles should allow for a variety of novel and improved services for customers…

This week, Audi of America and Verizon have announced a new partnership, aiming to use Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband connectivity within Audi vehicles to enable augmented mobile services and new driving-assistance features, paving the way for the automated vehicles of the future.

According to Verizon, embedding 5G connectivity capabilities within the vehicles should allow for a variety of novel and improved services for customers, including the faster and more reliable streaming of video services, improved safety features, and additional driving support systems.

These vehicles’ capabilities will continue to evolve further once already in use, with software and firmware updates delivered over the air.

“Audi drivers will be among the first in the world to experience a new generation of automobiles, one in which their car is both a 5G mobile device and a vehicle,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “We’re proud to bring our transformative 5G networking expertise to a visionary partner like Audi, whose premium automotive engineering deserves second-to-none 5G technology to match.”

Perhaps most interesting here is the companies pledging to co-develop cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology, allowing the car to wirelessly communicate with other vehicles and infrastructure, providing the driver with additional information. In the short term, this technology will largely be used to improve in-vehicle safety by giving the driver more information about their surroundings, but in the long term it will be crucial to the development of automated vehicles.

To facilitate this aspect of their 5G vision, Verizon is already partnered with all three major cloud providers – Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services – which will provide the required mobile edge computing services.

These tie ups between car manufactures and operators are becoming more common around the world. Last year, for example, AT&T signed a similar agreement with General Motors, with the automotive manufacturer’s Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC models to be equipped with 5G capabilities from 2023. 

In Europe, Deutsche Telekom announced just this week that they have deepened their partnership with BMW, allowing customers to link their BMW iX and BMW i4 vehicles to Telkom’s 5G network for the first time via their MobilityConnect service. 

Meanwhile, in China, numerous automakers are already engaged in 5G. General Motors, for example, says it hopes to launch 5G-connected vehicles in China as early as this year. 

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Also in the news: 
Tonga back online as submarine cable repaired
AT&T chasing green goals with new solar power purchase
Huawei Digital Power plans new $632m HQ

The new year did not start on a positive note for Tonga, with the submerged Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupting with more force than an atomic bomb, according to NASA.
 
The eruption caused tsunamis throughout the Pacific, leading to at least five fatalities and causing almost $100 million in damage.
 
Naturally, such an enormous natural disaster had an immediate impact on local submarine cable infrastructure, with a large portion of the 827km Tonga Cable damaged, leaving the country largely without international communications…

The new year did not start on a positive note for Tonga, with the submerged Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupting with more force than an atomic bomb, according to NASA.

The eruption caused tsunamis throughout the Pacific, leading to at least five fatalities and causing almost $100 million in damage.

Emergency satellite connectivity was quickly deployed, but these proved of limited use in the early days after the explosion due to the amount of ash cast up into the atmosphere. 

Now, over a month since the cable first went offline, Digicel Tonga have confirmed that the international section of the cable is functional once again and connectivity has been restored, having left the country offline for 38 days.

 « We had some capacity via satellite but nothing compared to what we’re having right now with the cable being reconnected, » said Tonga Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni. « It was a major task, given the amount of damage, and we thought it would be fixed a week ago.”

Initial appraisals for the damaged cable expected it to be back online by February 10, but poor weather conditions and the damage being more severe than expected presented a significant setback. 

SubCom’s cable ship Reliance performed the repairs, reportedly adding around 92km of cable to reconnect the cable. Some of the severed sections of the cable could be recovered and reconnected relatively easily, but a section of roughly 55km could not be located at all. 

“We suspect it’s buried in an avalanche,” said James Panuve, CEO of Tonga Cable.

While this news means that Tonga’s main island of Tongatapu can now reconnect to the international community, the cable repairs are far from over. Domestic portions of the cable, Tongatapu to some of the outer islands, were much closer to the initial explosion and remain heavily damaged, with repairs to these sections potentially taking many months.

Nonetheless, the reactivation of the main body of the Tonga Cable should present some relief to these smaller islands by allowing satellite capacity previously serving the main island to be reallocated to the rest of the archipelago.

This disaster has thrown Tonga’s reliance on a single submarine cable into sharp relief, with authorities now questioning whether backup connectivity to the island is sufficient. 

The procurement of a backup cable would, of course, be the method of choice, but this is prohibitively expensive and is unlikely to materialise without major support from the governments of major economic players in the region, like Australia and New Zealand. 

Therefore, even greater reliance on satellite could be required in future. Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was reportedly at work in neighbouring Fiji to establish a Starlink Gateway, helping to provide the region with faster, more reliable connectivity. The company has reportedly donated 50 satellite terminals directly to the Tongan government to help plug the gaps while the domestic sections of the cable are repaired.

“Elon Musk has given some satellite capacity, it is very fast and the MEIDECC are deciding who and where that will be placed,” said Panuve.

Also in the news: 

There is no question that the submarine fiber optics industry is enjoying an unprecedented period of strong demand for new cable systems.  The end of 2021 marked an extraordinary eight years of solid and sometimes spectacular growth for the market.  For an industry that traditionally saw a boom and bust cycle ever three-to-four years, the strength of the market during this period is something that has never been seen before.
In fact, the global submarine cable network is literally being rebuilt by new players using new methods and technologies…

There is no question that the submarine fiber optics industry is enjoying an unprecedented period of strong demand for new cable systems.  The end of 2021 marked an extraordinary eight years of solid and sometimes spectacular growth for the market.  For an industry that traditionally saw a boom and bust cycle ever three-to-four years, the strength of the market during this period is something that has never been seen before.

In fact, the global submarine cable network is literally being rebuilt by new players using new methods and technologies.  The “Over-the-Top” content providers are essentially overlaying a new transoceanic network on top of the existing global network.  This new network has capacities never before dreamed of thanks to Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM).  With SDM, fiber counts are increasing, first from 12 pairs to 24 pairs, with even more pairs are envisioned in the near future.  Total capacity on these cables has jumped from a few dozen Terabits per second (Tbps) to over 100 Tbps and soon to over 200 Tbps, all within just a handful of years.  

And while in the past the term “global network” actually referred more to connections between large cities throughout the world than a network that truly served the global community, today’s global network literally is being taken to the ends of the earth.  

Recently, we have seen submarine cables being deployed in the Amazon River Basin, to the island of St. Helena (considered one of the most remote inhabited islands on the planet), to the tip of South America and to numerous small islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.  And then there are the Polar Regions.  Multiple projects for the Arctic and even the Antarctic are now being proposed and taken seriously.  

But the explosion in submarine cable demand is not confined to the number of cables, their capacities and their locations.  Other applications are being found for cables, most notably the use of commercial submarine cables for scientific data collection in addition to carrying the usual Internet traffic.  This application takes several forms, including SMART (Scientific Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications) Cables, Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and State of Polarization (SOP) and could lead to improved tsunami warning capabilities, improved understanding of subsea geological activities such as earthquakes and volcanoes and many other possibilities.

DAS and SOP are being studied and tested on multiple cables around the world, but let’s focus on SMART for a moment.  2021 saw several major developments, beginning with an endorsement of the technology by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.  This was followed by a more than $7 million award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to set the groundwork for the use of SMART technology on a planned cable connecting New Caledonia and Vanuuta.  In the Atlantic, the Portuguese government has become a leading proponent of the technology and plans to use SMART on an upcoming domestic cable system connecting the mainland with the Azores and Madeira Islands.  We are about to see the dawning of a new era of ocean exploration based on submarine cables.

The current boom in submarine cable demand already has lasted far longer than most expected.  While there are no objective data to indicate that this will end soon, the reality is that it will end at some point.  But when it does, it will be a in a world consisting of a network of massive subsea data pipes carrying Internet traffic to every corner of the globe, while at the same time providing us with undreamt amounts of scientific data that will enable us to understand our oceans like never before.  

This is the real future of the submarine cable market.  

Last week, rumours were emerging suggesting that the owners of VMO2 – Liberty Global and Telefonica – had entered into discussions with investors for the creation of a new JV to help accelerate the rollout of FTTP in the UK.
At the time, sources were suggesting that VMO2 would be looking to raise as much as £1 billion to help launch the new business…

Last week, rumours were emerging suggesting that the owners of VMO2 – Liberty Global and Telefonica – had entered into discussions with investors for the creation of a new JV to help accelerate the rollout of FTTP in the UK.

At the time, sources were suggesting that VMO2 would be looking to raise as much as £1 billion to help launch the new business, which would target areas VMO2’s FTTP network currently is not set to reach. 

Now, alongside announcing their financial results, VMO2 have confirmed that they are indeed in discussions with a number of potential investors to take part in a JV. This JV will aim to build a new FTTP network covering roughly 7 million premises by 2027, which will then be offered on a wholesale basis to UK operators. VMO2, naturally, will be an anchor tenant of the new network. 

Ultimately, seeking partners for additional network investment should come as little surprise, with VMO2 having said last year that it would prefer not to fund the rollout of FTTP to another 7 million on its own. In the past few years we have seen numerous rumours related to UK ISPs that could potentially have joined forces with Virgin Media to facilitate this joint build, though until now they have never been confirmed.

If all goes to plan, once completed this new network will expand VMO2’s total gigabit reach to roughly 23 million premises, presenting a serious challenge to UK incumbent Openreach.

However, its rollout still has a long way to go. 

VMO2 currently has around 1.2 million premises with FTTP and is aiming to increase that figure to 7 million by 2027. The company said today that they expect to add roughly 500,000 new premises to the FTTP network in 2022, though this pace will need to be accelerated if they hope to reach their 7 million target.

BT, meanwhile, already has roughly 6 million premises covered by FTTP and is planning to spend £15 billion to increase this total to 25 million premises by 2025.

For the time being, however, VMO2 can claim to be ‘the country’s largest gigabit provider’, having announced back in December last year that they had fully completed their network upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 technology, allowing their full 15.5 million covered premises to access gigabit-capable broadband. 

What impact would the creation of new major fibre wholesaler have on the UK broadband market? Find out from the experts at this year’s Connected Britain conference 

Also in the news: 
Tech sovereignty debate takes the to the stars with €6bn EU satellite plan
CityFibre and BAI team up for private 5G in Sunderland
IBM spin off Kyndryl partners with Nokia to target enterprise market

AT&T has announced two new virtual power purchase agreements with Dutch energy and commodities trader Vitol, buying 155MW of capacity at two upcoming solar plants. 
According to the operator, 80MW of capacity will come from the Bluegrass project in Maryland, while the other 75MW will come from the Swiftwater project in Pennsylvania…

AT&T has announced two new virtual power purchase agreements with Dutch energy and commodities trader Vitol, buying 155MW of capacity at two upcoming solar plants. 

According to the operator, 80MW of capacity will come from the Bluegrass project in Maryland, while the other 75MW will come from the Swiftwater project in Pennsylvania. These sites are expected to be operational in 2022 and 2023, respectively, reportedly creating up to 300 new jobs for the local areas.

“In addition to reducing our emissions footprint, deals like the ones with Vitol allow us to hedge against changes in energy costs and support economic development in communities we serve. It’s a win-win-win,” said AT&T’s vice president of global infrastructure optimisation and implementation, Joe Taylor.

Back in 2020, AT&T announced it would purchase 500MW of power output from Invenergy’s planned Samson Solar Energy Center in Texas. At the time, AT&T said the deal was the largest solar deal ever in the US.

In total, AT&T now has access to 1.7 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity through power purchase agreements. 

Naturally, energy usage is the operator’s largest source of CO2 emissions, so building more efficient networks and fuelling them with renewable energy are at the heart of AT&T’s goals of reaching carbon neutrality by 2035. Verizon is similarly aiming for net zero carbon emissions by 2035, while T-Mobile is aiming to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 95% by 2025, using 2016 as the base year. 

T-Mobile also announced last year that they had already sourced renewable energy equivalent to 100% of their total electricity usage, meeting a goal they had set back in 2018.

In related news, earlier this week AT&T’s rival Verizon announced that it had allocated the roughly $1 billion in funding raised from its latest Green Bond, covering around 910MW in renewable energy purchase agreements. Since the end of 2019, the company claims to have signed over 20 such agreements, purchasing roughly 2.6 gigawatts in renewable energy production capacity.

Are operators doing enough to make the telecoms sector more environmentally friendly? Find out the latest news in telco sustainability at this year’s Total Telecom Congress 

Also in the news: 
Tech sovereignty debate takes the to the stars with €6bn EU satellite plan
CityFibre and BAI team up for private 5G in Sunderland
IBM spin off Kyndryl partners with Nokia to target enterprise market