“We had been living in a networking world dominated by hardware, but we now have SDN.”
NEWS & BUSINESS
Antony Savvas – see page 22
CommScope and OFS extend long-term fibre partnership
CommScope and OFS have announced the extension of their long- term fibre partnership. As both companies invest in capacity to address the strong demand for more bandwidth, they have entered into a new eight- year partnership to help ensure the availability of OFS optical fibre supply to CommScope for use in its customers’ networks. “OFS values our long- standing partnership with CommScope and supports their global operations with a multi-sourced contract from our optical fibre facilities in the United States, Europe and Japan,” said Pierre Marty, senior vice president, Global The Indian Government has achieved a significant milestone in its BharatNet programme, completing Phase 1 of the project with the connection of over 100,000 Gram Panchayats (GPs, or village/small town councils) across the country with a high speed optical fibre network. The landmark figure was achieved on 31st December last year. At a ceremony marking the event, Union Minister for Communications Shri Manoj Sinha said that the vision and the mission of the country was to connect India to realise the goal of the Prime Minister’s Digital India by bridging the
fibre for development of innovative fibre cabling products for global wireline and wireless networks,” said Jaxon Lang, senior vice president and Connectivity Solutions segment leader, CommScope. “Service providers and enterprises are
Marketing and Sales at OFS. “The OFS investment to increase manufacturing capacity was welcome news to our customers with the requirements of 5G, FTTx, Node-Plus-Zero, and Internet of Things consuming bandwidth and driving build-outs globally. The OFS innovations in fibre optics can support this breadth of reach from fibre for traditional outside plant applications, to 200 micron fibre helping to ease installation in existing crowded duct networks, to bend insensitive fibre to connect the home, businesses and wireless cells.” “Through this agreement, CommScope secures access to a premier supply of optical digital divide. Describing BharatNet as the world’s largest rural broadband project yet created, Shri Sinha said that the project would generate massive employment opportunities, both directly and indirectly, in the country in the near future. He underlined the need to complete Phase 2 of the BharatNet well before the target date of March 2019 and so usher in a rural digital revolution by connecting 250,000 GPs with broadband networking. The Minister asked Government o cials to include and enforce financial incentives facilitating the speedy execution of Phase 2 of the project and said that
pushing fibre connectivity deeper into their networks to address the growing need for speed and capacity. We are pleased to continue our relationship with OFS in the supply of optical fibre — it is an important part of our growing fibre connectivity
Rolling: OFS will continue to supply Commscope with fibre.
commercial building, campus and data centre networks around the world.“
business that supports wireless, broadband,
India lights up rural communities
the infrastructure created under BharatNet would be a national asset, accessible on a non-discriminatory basis by service providers. The project aims to provide a ordable broadband services to citizens and institutions in rural and remote areas, in partnership with States and the private sector. The next phase of the scheme envisages delivery of high-speed broadband services in over 250,000 villages benefitting, more than 200 million rural Indians. TEJAS COMPLETES 40,000 INSTALLATIONS In a related development,
indigenous networking and optical aggregation system supplier Tejas
Networks reported that it had successfully completed GPON equipment installations in over 40,000 GPs as part of the BharatNet Phase 1 initiative. According to Indian Government figures, at the end of May 2014 when work on BharatNet had started in 4,918 GPs, 358 km of Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) had been pulled and 59 GPs were made service ready. At the end of December 2017, 254,895 km of OFC had been laid covering 109,926 GPs, out of which 101,370 GPs had been made service ready.
Rural life: Over 100,000 Indian villages are now connected to high speed fibre networks.
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| ISSUE 12 | Q1 2018
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