Business

At the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting in Washington DC in December, IBM’s Dr Solomon Assefa presented a major advance in the ability to use light instead of electrical signals to transmit data for computing. The breakthrough technology, called ‘silicon nanophotonics’ is able to transport information via pulses of light through optical fibres in order to deal with the growing volumes of data being created and transmitted over enterprise networks.

Transmode has appointed Mark Stevens as its VP for the Asia-Pacific region. Stevens will be responsible for the company's activities in the region and will be based in Singapore, which has been his home for several years.

Koch Industries has completed a $7.2 billion acquisition of Molex, a global electronic components company.

The acquisition was finalised through the merger of Koch Industries’ wholly owned subsidiary, Koch Connectors, with and into Molex. As a result of the merger, Molex is now an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, retaining its name and headquarters in Lisle, Illinois. The company will continue to be operated by its current management team.

The Optical Society and the IEEE Photonics Society have announced that Kazuro Kikuchi of the University of Tokyo in Japan is the recipient of the 2014 John Tyndall Award.

Data traffic on metropolitan (metro) access and aggregation networks is set to increase by 560 per cent by 2017, driven by demand for video and the proliferation of data centres, according to a study.

Eircom has announced an increase to its planned national fibre footprint from 1.2 million homes and businesses to 1.4 million homes and businesses across Ireland.

The plans mean that, by July 2016, 70 per cent of the country is scheduled to have access to fibre broadband speeds of up to 100Mbs.

The company says its fibre programme is ahead of schedule and is on track to pass 700,000 premises by the end of the year. Today’s announcement means that an 562 additional communities across the country will be able to connect to Eircom’s eFibre service.

Australian campaigners have delivered a 270,000-strong petition to the country's government, highlighting demands for a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network rather than the proposed fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) solution.

The petition, posted on the Change.org website, is thought to be the biggest online petition ever filed in Australia.

The petition, organised by Nick Paine, states: 'As currently proposed, the Coalition’s FTTN solution relies on the existing copper lines to supply individual premises access to the National Broadband Network (NBN) over the last mile or so.

ICT solutions provider Huawei and telecommunications operator Turk Telekom have announced the successful trial of a 2T WDM system on the Turkish company's live network.

Prysmian Group, a major player in the energy, telecom cables and systems industry, has signed a technical cooperation agreement with Rosseti, Russia's largest power grid company, to develop power transmission and distribution technology in Russia.
 
The agreement, signed by Valerio Battista, Prysmian Group CEO, and Oleg Budargin, Rosseti CEO, determines development prospects regarding the exchange of information in order to analyse and develop solutions for power transmission systems with voltages of up to 500 kV.

Fibre broadband connections are bringing real business advantages to Cornwall, which is fast becoming one of the best-connected areas of the UK despite its relative geographical isolation.

The county's fibre broadband network has now reached 206,000 homes and businesses – 82 per cent of the population – making it one of the best connected areas in Britain and the best connected rural region in Europe.