FROM THE INDUSTRY
A great example of this can be found in New Zealand where the operator noticed a very heavy user on one of the fibre links, a cherry farm. The farm figured out that if they if they run image analytics on the cherries, they can accurately check the quality of each individual cherry, and then they can sort them precisely, guaranteeing their quality; thus, they can get slightly better prices. They take 72 pictures of each cherry, send the 72 pictures to the cloud, where they analyse the images and sort them accordingly. Presumably some data centre is absolutely groaning with pictures of cherries. It’s the additional bandwidth that’s allowed this to happen. Before now, it didn’t make sense to build an entire room with servers just to do one harvest a year. Now, because they are connected to a 25Gbps network, they have enough bandwidth, and can do all the processing in the cloud. They just rent a bunch of servers for two weeks. Because of this, they can triple the amount of land that they are going use to plant trees. His business case is improving all the time. YOUR FARMER’S exposure to risk is reduced because he knows exactly what he’s dealing with. Exactly! When people ask why you need 10Gbps, that’s why. Because a farmer wants to take 72 pictures of each cherry. Which isn’t immediately obvious. It goes back to that investment; you’re building something that is going to meet future needs. You’ll never have to upgrade that cabling again before your retirement. What’s coming up for Nokia this year? There are basically three big areas that we invest in. One is fibre solutions. The other one is fixed wireless access. The third one is automation. Almost everything we do fits in one of those three buckets for broadband access. So, what is Nokia’s focus right now? To build next generation fibre technologies; offering our operators 10Gbps, knowing that 25Gbps, 50Gbps, 100Gbps are all available if required.
Tell me about Nokia’s work with rural broadband in Finland. I would say it’s broader than just rural broadband and broader than Finland. Out of 2 billion homes across the planet, roughly half are connected and passed with fibre. Not all will be able to get fibre simply because the business case doesn’t work, or it’s just too hard because they are in very remote areas. And further afield? There are also countries with good DSL or cable infrastructure available, typically in Western Europe or the US. Some countries started later with fibre. I live in Belgium, which started deploying fibre during COVID when the streets were empty, and they could dig up everything. But they had good DSL infrastructure, same with the UK; pretty good coverage with DSL. There is therefore less incentive to convert to fibre? Not necessarily, there is probably more incentive now than ever before to convert to fibre. DSL was good but today’s digital landscape is driving a need for more capacity and greater speeds all of which fibre can provide. Finland is a good example. They didn’t have a lot of fixed access in Finland because Finland had an unusually high adoption of mobile phones. As a result, there was actually very little fixed broadband because people were doing everything on their phones. However, mobile handsets are no longer fast enough to do it all, especially for things like cloud-based applications. There’s a lot of ambitious fibre rollouts going on in Finland with alternative technologies like fixed wireless access helping to fill the gaps to get fast broadband connections to more people sooner. It takes about 10 years to cover an entire country with fibre to the home. It’s a slower process than you think. Many countries try to cut all the red tape and make the permitting process easier. In Belgium, where I live, if you dig up a street you have to notify all the utility companies, because if they need to
do digging as well in the near future, it must be combined in one bigger project. However, it also means that sometimes you’ll need to wait 12 months to get a permit to dig somewhere because you have to combine it with two or three other projects. Then you basically need crews who can dig up a street and put fibre in the ground. And in many countries, that lag creates a bottleneck. There are just not enough construction companies to dig up every city all at once. If everything moves so slowly, why the pursuit of high-speed technology? Do people really need a 100Gbps network today? The point is, you’re future proofing the network with fibre in the ground which will be good for generations. Operators can simply upgrade the speed by changing the electronics on both sides allowing them to easily go from GPON to XGS, to 25Gbps today and eventually to 50, and even 100Gbps in the future. While the fibre build is about 90% of the cost; once you put that fibre in the ground it’ll last, it’ll last for decades, and you can just keep upgrading the speed when you need to. The need for speed. Do you think the appetite for it will keep going up and up and up or is it going to level out eventually? Typically, if you provide the bandwidth, someone will figure out a way to use it. Bill Gates once said 640K is enough for anyone but look at where we are today with demand for 10Gbps and even 25Gbps speeds becoming more prevalent. We’re no longer just using these networks for residential. Your neighbourhood might have a small startup company, maybe they do video production. With fibre, the operator can address both using one single network, because that fibre to the home network can do both GPON and XGS or 25 or 50 at the same time. So you no longer have to build a separate network just to connect that one video production company in your neighbourhood. They can just put them on the same network. The residential users stay on GPON or XGSPON, and maybe this video company goes to 25Gbps.
May 2025 Volume 47 No.2
71
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker