Business

'Showcasing a Brighter Future' is the theme of the next edition of the FTTH Conference, taking place at the Stockholmsmässan exhibition centre in Stockholm, Sweden, from 18 to 20 February 2014.

FTTH Council Europe, which is organising the event, says the The Nordic nations – and Sweden especially – have become the most advanced fibre countries in Europe. Nearly half of all Swedish households have access to a FTTH connection, and 23 per cent of homes in the country are already FTTH subscribers. Norway, Denmark and Finland also have high levels of FTTH deployment and adoption.

Molex, a global electronics components company, has completed the acquisition of FCT Electronics Group, based in Munich, Germany.  FCT Electronics specialises in designing and manufacturing custom mixed-layout connectors and cable assemblies. This strategic acquisition is expected to expand the presence of Molex solutions in the global medical electronics, industrial, telecom and aerospace industries.
 

French telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent and SaskTel, the full service communications provider in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, have announced the successful trial of fibre-optic data transmission that could enable the delivery of data at speeds of up to 400G (gigabytes-per second) over a network originally built for 10G traffic.
 

TeraXion, a designer and maker of optical components and modules, and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) have signed a strategic partnership.

The two parties says the deal will lead to the development and fabrication of TeraXion’s new modulator products family and covers its next-generation Indium Phosphide high-speed modulators for coherent transmission systems at 100 Gb/s and beyond. Work will take place at NRC’s Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre in Ottawa.

Interest in Hawaiki's new 14,000 km trans-Pacific cable continues to grow, with cable developer and owner Hawaiki Cable announcing another customer signature.

New Zealand ISP Orcon has confirmed its intention to acquire international bandwidth on the New Zealand/Australia-US segments of the Hawaiki submarine cable system.

This month’s ECOC (European Conference on Optical Communications) 2013 has plenty to attract delegates. The conference will be held on 22 to 26 September at the ICC London ExCeL, with an exhibition running from 23 to 25 September.

The conference programme will be divided into six 'tracks', as follows:

Liquid Telecom has announced two initiatives aimed at broadband services in Zimbabwe – the country’s first direct fibre connection to the West African Cable System (WACS) and the rollout of an urban fibre network in the capital, Harare.

TeraXion, a provider of optical components and modules, and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) have announced a strategic partnership that it says will lead to the development and fabrication of TeraXion’s new modulator products family.

The company says the agreement covers its next-generation Indium Phosphide high-speed modulators for coherent transmission systems at 100 Gb/s and beyond. Work will take place at NRC’s Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre in Ottawa.

The UK government is being petitioned to provide a 'true national fibre optic network' instead of going ahead with the controversial HS2 rail system.

The petition on the HM Government E-petition website, created by 'broadband activist' Matthew Coutts, states: 'The plans for the HS2 (High Speed 2) rail project should be completely scrapped in favour of developing a national true fibre optic broadband network to make the UK one of the fastest and best connected countries in the world with a future-proof technology in place.

The new Australian coalition government is planning to change the development of the country's national broadband network, from a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network to a fibre-to-node network.

The new plan, pledged by the newly elected government, will use copper cables from the national network provider Telstra's to connect households to the fibre network.