Google to Light 6th Undersea Cable in Which It has Ownership Interest

Google is working with Facebook, Pacific Light Data Communication and TE Subcom to build the first direct submarine cable system between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. The move highlights changes in the way global wide area network capacity is created and supplied.

The Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) will have 12,800 km of fiber and an estimated cable capacity of 120 Tbps, making it the highest-capacity trans-Pacific route, a record currently held by another Google-backed cable system, FASTER.

The project represents the sixth submarine cable in which Google has an ownership stake, joining the ranks of the Unity, SJC, FASTER, MONET and Tannat projects. The new network is expected to be operational in 2018.

Though data center traffic is a fraction of end-user traffic or traffic within single data centers, intra-data-center traffic has the fastest growth rate, at about a 32 percent compound annual growth rate.

In addition to cloud computing and cloud-based apps, video, mobile users and Internet access now drives wide area network capacity demand.

Those apps and functions now drive “in the data center” traffic, long haul and metro traffic growth. In fact, wide area network traffic, though growing robustly, is not growing as fast as “within the metro” demand.

Metro-area traffic likely surpassed long-haul traffic in 2015, and will grow nearly twice as fast as long-haul traffic from 2014 to 2019.

The higher growth in metro networks is due in part to the increasingly significant role of content delivery networks, which bypass long-haul links and deliver traffic to metro and regional backbones.

Content delivery networks will carry over half of Internet traffic by 2019. Globally, 62 percent of all Internet traffic will cross content delivery networks by 2019 globally, up from 39 percent in 2014.

Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2019. By 2019, wired devices will account for 33 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 66 percent of IP traffic. In 2014, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 54 percent.

Though there has been a mix of “carrier-purchased” and “enterprise private networking,” the current trend in the WAN market includes a higher mix of “owned” networking by big app providers such as Facebook and Google.

Equinix Will Use Space-Based Optical Communications

Equinix will be first to use a Laser Light Communications space-based laser communications system. As part of the initial agreement, Laser Light will establish its inaugural global Point of Presence (PoP) at Equinix’s DC11 International Business Exchange data center in the Washington, D.C. area.

Once operational, the All Optical Hybrid Global Network (HALO) will offer wide area communications to carriers, enterprises and government customers at Equinix facilities around the globe.

The initial deployment in Equinix’s DC11 IBX is expected to grow with additional Points of Presence planned globally, including Equinix facilities in the UK, Japan, Brazil, Australia, the Middle East, and Europe.

The system is based on use of medium earth orbit satellites, initially using eight to 12  satellites.

It Has Taken a Couple of Decades, but Fixed Wireless is Coming Back in a Big Way

Windstream plans to expand its fixed wireless access operations in 40 U.S. markets, using 39-GHz millimeter wave spectrum, presumably for backhaul and business customer access.

Ironically, Windstream in 2008 wrote down the value of its 39 GHz spectrum holdings to zero, as part of a sale of mobile and wireless assets to AT&T Mobility.

The collapse of a millimeter-wave access services business is not terribly unusual. Whole companies (Windstar and Teligent, for example) went bankrupt after trying to build an enterprise access business using millimeter wave technology, after the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.   

But times change. Platforms become more capable. Costs go down. And with coming 5G mobile networks embracing millimeter wave technology, what was a broken business model two decades ago might well become an essential underpinning of next generation networks, both mobile and fixed.

Google Fiber, Facebook, AT&T and Verizon are a few of the leading firms now developing or planning to use fixed wireless in a significant way for Internet access.

Cambridge Broadband Networks (CBNL) is providing the radios and and Straight Path Communications is supplying the spectrum licenses for the Windstream rollout.

The new technology will allow Windstream customers data speeds of up to 275 Mbps full duplex, and it also supplements Windstream's other fixed wireless access technologies that range in speed from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps.

Windstream will deploy in seven existing markets where it currently offers fixed wireless access technology - Chicago, New York City, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Little Rock  using equipment from CBNL and spectrum from Straight Path.

Windstream will also deploy CNBL equipment in 33 new markets where it will begin offering its fixed wireless technology. Those markets include Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis,Nashville, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Richmond, San Antonio, Seattle and St. Louis.

Under the agreement, Windstream has the option of eventually expanding fixed wireless to an additional 32 markets where Straight Path owns 39 GHz spectrum.

Ericsson Not at "the Beginning of the End," CEO Insists

You can draw your own conclusions about Ericsson CEO Jan Frykhammar saying “this is absolutely not the beginning of the end for Ericsson.” Those remarks came in the context of a warning that “business result for the third quarter 2016 will be significantly lower than company expectations.”

In the first half of 2016, with demand for mobile broadband products has been negative. Sales declined by 14 percent year over year, while gross profit margin declined 34 percent.

Ericsson said “business result for the third quarter 2016 will be significantly lower than company expectations,” driven by macro-economic toughness in some markets, as well as completion of some mobile network upgrades in Europe.

Ericsson did not specifically mention competition from either Huawei or Nokia Networks, but many will say that also is part of the problem.

Metric	Q316	Q315	YoY change	Q216	QoQ change
Sales	51.1	59.2	-14%	54.1	-6%
Sales in Networks segment	23.3	28.8	-19%	26.8	-13%
Gross income	14.5	20.1	-28%	17.5	-17%
Gross margin	28.3%	33.9%	-	32.3%	-
Operating expenses	-14.1	-14.9	-6%	-14.5	-3%
Operating income	0.3	5.1	-93%	2.8	-88%
Income in Networks segment	-0.3	2.8	-109%	1.6	-116%
Operating income excluding restructuring charges	1.6	6.1	-73%	3.8	-58%

Over the past several decades, many former big brand names in telecommunications have disappeared, as the global industry has consolidated. One might point to Nortel and Lucent, for example, as the most-obvious examples.

Some seem to be thinking Ericsson could be next.

Can Connected Health Help With Widespread Pain Issues?

More than half of U.S. adults (125 million) had a musculoskeletal pain disorder in 2012, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Though it is not yet clear that connected health devices can help people manage or alleviate such pain, the wide extent of such problems suggests the potential for such innovatins.

Just over 20 percent of U.S. adults had arthritic conditions (22.1 percent) or lower back pain (20.3 percent). A smaller percentage of persons reported having non-arthritic joint pains or other joint conditions (17.5 percent) and neck pain or problems (14.3 percent).

Some 9.8 percent had sciatica issues. A significant proportion of the population reported having at least one other musculoskeletal problem that was not examined independently (28.1 percent).

Pain also is correlated with another problem, namely lack of sleep. The 2015 Sleep in America Poll found that pain is a key factor in “sleep debt:” Some 21 percent of people have experienced chronic pain and lose 42 minutes of sleep due to it; 36 percent have experience acute pain, resulting in 14 minutes of lost sleep each night.

source: Sleep Foundation

Colt Creates Multi-Carrier SDN Capability

Colt says it now can enable its customers to configure and activate Ethernet networks across service provider boundaries software defined networking capabilities very rapidly. Colt says  

collaboration with an unnamed North American partner allows Colt customers to locate a service on the Colt On Demand portal, set up a data service, run video over the connection, flex the available bandwidth and then shut the service down all within 10 minutes.

That is important when enterprises need a temporary change in bandwidth at any specific location, or when connections to new partners must be quickly adjusted. According to a recent survey, the average European enterprise uses 987 cloud services. Furthermore, the number of cloud providers grew 61 percent, year over year, according to Colt.

"Average" U.S. Internet Access Speeds are Highly Dynamic

If in the second quarter of 2016, average connection speeds in U.S. cities ranged from 17 Mbps to 24 Mbps, while Internet service providers are selling gigabit access, as well as services in the 100 Mbps to 300 Mbps range, it is obvious that most consumers are not buying either gigabit or hundreds-of-megabits services.

On the other hand, speeds are increasing rapidly. In fact, according to Okla, fixed network customers in the first half of 2016 got an average of over 50 Mbps for the first time ever.

That represents a speed improvement of more than a 40 percent since July 2015.

Similarly, mobile Internet access customers saw speeds improve by more than 30 percent since last year, with an average download speed of 19.27 Mbps in the first six months of 2016.

In other words, by some measures, mobile Internet access download speeds are as fast, or nearly as fast, as the “average” U.S. fixed network connection in at least some cities.

Just as important are speed differences between various ISPs. Where Google Fiber might offer an average speed in excess of 300 Mbps, Comcast and other cable TV ISPs might average about 50 Mbps to 45 Mbps. Telcos tend to deliver slower speeds than that, with the exception of Verizon FiOS, which has an average speed of about 50 Mbps.

source: Ookla

source: Ookla