magazine - Connect-World

Bandwidth
Conquering through copper - delivering content
wherever needed
by Lee Palmer, Commercial Director, The Kenton Group
With the growing demand for bandwidth to deliver the content today’s users require, especially
given the growth in mobile device ownership and bandwidth-hungry applications. So there
is a growing concern of a crunch in the future. Dealing with a crunch means choosing the
most effective medium will be the key to operator success. Fibre will always be the number
one choice, but copper is everywhere, inexpensive and inherently reliable, but for the last
mile copper is here and available now.
Lee Palmer is the Commercial Director of The Kenton Group. He has more than 20 years of sales experience in senior roles: at Jtec, he
served as EMEA Sales Director; at 3Com as Business Development Manager for the CommWorks division; ad at RAD /Axerra where he
held the position of Carrier Business Development Manager and Sales Director.
The perpetual demand for ever increasing
bandwidth and capacity on the world’s
telecom networks continues year after year.
This growth is driven by the increasing use
of mobile-connected devices such as tablets,
Smartphones, laptops and smart TVs, to name
a few. High-definition video and streamed
content on consumer devices is on the rise,
and there is no sign of this growth slowing
anytime soon.
There is a growing concern surrounding a
future ‘capacity crunch’, where the ability
to deliver capacity will be outstripped by
demand. Each year new devices, increased
capabilities and intelligence are being
introduced in the market, with the number
of mobile-connected devices set to exceed
the number of people on earth by the end
of 2013, reaching ten billion by 2016i.
Regionally, Western Europe is going to have
one of the fastest growth rates in mobile
devices and connections with a 13 per cent
and ten per cent compound annual growth
rate from 2012 to 2017 respectively. By
2017, the Middle East and Africa will have
the strongest mobile data traffic growth of
any region at 77 per cent compound annual
growth rateii. These stats alone highlight the
need for higher bandwidth – if we ignore the
signals we will put increasing pressure on the
networks, which may already be at risk of
crashing in the next 20 years.
As content increases, bandwidth needs to
expand
In order to stream high value content - TV,
video, games or otherwise – uninterrupted,
with zero buffering, more bandwidth is
needed. Most cities and new commercial or
residential developments are well connected
as fibre infrastructure is now the de facto
standard for connectivity, this means people
can effectively use the myriad of IP services
and more importantly, have the content they
require delivered over a high speed medium.
Fibre delivers unbeatable speeds and is as
future proof as a technology can be. Fibre
delivery reduces cost for deployment in areas
where the population is higher. In fact fibre
is now moving into the LAN environment
with many corporates using Fibre to the Desk
(FTTD) in buildings, by utilising GPON in
the architecture, as it can reduce capital and
operational costs by up to 70 per cent. This
up and coming technology is called FiberLan
46 • EMEA 2013