By-:Ted Land

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska has long been connected.

Satellites have been used for phone calls, Internet and other data transfer.

But there’s something faster and more reliable out there.

We’re talking about fiber optics — and now companies in Alaska are finding new ways to wire the state.

If you have no idea what a company like Applied Microsytems does, you’re not alone. But chances are, the data passing through these servers has touched your life in some way.

Kaladi Brothers Coffee, the State, and Municipality all rely on this company to help organize and save their files.

“If you thought about it for a second, we could almost be considered the digital divide between Alaska and the Lower 48,” said Ross Toole with Applied Microsystems. “And that gap is being bridged.”

The gap is being bridged by AKORN, short for Alaska Oregon Network.

It’s a $175 million undersea fiber optic cable linking Alaska to the Lower 48.

“Just on the northern end of Fire Island it turns and comes ashore,” said Steve Gebert, ACS project leader.

ACS owns the line and fired it up in April.  It’s designed to move 2.6 terabits, or 35 feature-length movies, per second.

“Everyone says, ‘Well do we need that much?’” said Gebert. “And again, think about how much bandwidth we were all  using 10 or 15 years ago, think about where all that could go in 25 years, and the answer is yes.”

It’s actually two cables.  If one fails, say, due to an undersea earthquake, data would switch over to the second line.

“It’s what we call ring-protected service and it switches in milliseconds,” said Gebert.

The concept is hardly new to Alaska. GCI has operated a similar cable for the past 10 years.

And now, they too are looking to expand.

A plan to run fiber optics to rural communities in western Alaska, using riverbeds, is in the works.

“It’s a very large-scale project and very challenging for the engineers and the whole organization,” said Jimmy Sipes with GCI Network Services. “However, we believe it’s quite doable.”

According to ACS, Internet connectivity for businesses is growing at about 40 percent per year.

For the team at Applied Microsystems it could be an opportunity to expand.

Fiber optics could someday allow them to start handling work from the Lower 48.

“Effectively, it’s really an enabling technology that removes a major impediment that we face which is the high cost of bandwidth in Alaska,” said Toole.

Fast, reliable data transfer — it’s not so complicated after all.

Again, this is by no means a new technology in Alaska.

Fiber optics have been around for years, but the fact that companies in Alaska continue to expand is significant and shows the state’s connection to the rest of the country is growing.

People who surf the web from home probably won’t notice much of a change. Internet speed doesn’t accelerate dramatically when a new fiber line is put in place. But this technology does insure a reliable link to servers in the Lower 48, which host most websites Alaskans surf.

Contact Ted Land at tland@ktuu.com

By Rebecca Wanjiku

There is no doubt that the fiber optic cables will reduce the cost of connectivity; at least the high cost of satellite space will no longer be an excuse.

The ship laying The East Africa Submarine System docked at the port of Mombasa last week, providing yet another glimmer of hope, two months after the ship laying the SEACOM cable docked.

After all the hype, the focus should now be on the country’s preparedness to deal with the increased capacity. There has been long discussions about the role of local content. But where are the policies to guide the creation of the content?

The Kenya Communications Amendment Act has been hailed as a win for all of us but it needs supporting subsidiary legislation. Yes it says that the Communications Commission of Kenya will license the certification authorities but at what point will the awareness start?

Are we waiting for the huge pipes to be at our door steps then we will start wondering what to do or we can just check emails and that is it? How will we know that the websites asking us to send money via Mpesa or via credit card are genuine?
For all we know, this could provide another ground for cybercrooks to terrorize us. And when the media reports of the theft online, the media will be branded as unpatriotic.

There is so much education that is needed, to both the literate and the illiterate; the various opportunities that we can take advantage of and the rules that govern the industry.

The fiber will be here, it will be cheap, but we might just fear e-commerce because of the rogue business people who may be camouflaged online.

Now the supply side seems to be stable, the focus should shift to creating the demand!

By MEERA SELVA

UK plans universal access to high-speed Internet

About one-third of Britain’s population does not have access to the Internet at home — a startling statistic that prompted a government promise Tuesday to overhaul the country’s digital infrastructure.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown outlined a 200 million pound ($328 million) program that would ensure that every British home can have broadband Internet access at 2 megabytes per second by 2012. That’s fast enough to buy products online and download most Web pages.
“Just as the bridges, roads and railways built in the 19th century were the foundations of an Industrial Revolution that helped Britain to become the workshop of the world, so investment now in the information and communications industries can underpin our emergence from recession,” Brown wrote in an op-ed piece for the Times of London.

Roughly a quarter of Britain’s 61 million people do not use the Internet at all, while nearly 3 million homes have connections that are too slow to download movies, shop online or easily navigate social networking sites. As many as 18 million people do not have any Internet access in their homes.
Unlike most other European countries, Britain still relies heavily on copper cables that can only carry data over a few miles (kilometers), instead of fiber optic cables that can transmit data across entire oceans.
That means people who live far away from the telephone exchanges that are used to transmit data receive a slow or erratic Internet connection. And most of those households are in rural areas or far from cinemas and shopping malls — exactly the kind of areas that could benefit from downloaded movies and online shopping.
Communications minister Stephen Carter acknowledged that investment in the Internet “has not been put on the same level as we have put other pieces of critical infrastructure.”
“We need to start looking at a communications infrastructure the same way we look at a transportation infrastructure,” he said.
Matthew Howett, analyst with telecommunications consultancy OVUM says the layout of Britain’s towns — with its long stretches of row houses — may also be to blame.
Britons tend to live in low slung towns and suburbs around major cities, and the country does not have the mass concentrations of people found in many major European countries. Even London is a collection of villages that grew together. This sprawl gives Britain its unique character — but creates huge problems for laying out fiber optic cable.
The cost of digging up city streets, together with Victorian-era pipes that once were the envy of Europe, now hamper construction, accounting for 70 percent of the total cost of installing fiber optic cables in an area.
“Other European countries have a lot more apartment blocks so you can reach several people with one connection. In the U.K. we have lots of low-level houses so these local loops have to run much farther,” he said. “The government has a role to reduce the civil engineering costs of laying fiber optic cables. Maybe coordinating so that when a water company comes to dig up the road, a telecoms company can put fiber optic cables in as well.”
Britain is not the only country to try to expand Internet access. Germany announced a similar plan in December, as part of its first economic stimulus package and last year Finland launched program to make broadband accessible to everyone in one of Europe’s most sparsely populated countries by end of 2015. India’s President Pratibha Patil recently outlined plans to get 40 percent of people in the countryside online over the next five years.
“There is a problem about people being disconnected from society, if they can’t get online,” said Howett. “There’s a whole range of products and services that should be available to everyone, not just those lucky enough to have an Internet connection.”
The government plans to raise an annual six pound ($9.80) tax on every fixed telephone line to provide subsidies for Internet companies to deliver fast Internet connections to areas where it would not normally be viable. It also aims to get Internet costs down so no one should feel they are unable to afford an Internet connection.

Written by Manuel T. Cayon / Reporter

PLDT fiber optics problem isolates Davao

DAVAO CITY—This city and a large area of the Davao Region were cut off from the rest of the world early yesterday when fiber optic cables of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) broke in two locations, cutting mobile, landline and internet connections here.

PLDT sources who spoke to the BusinessMirrror on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, said that the fiber optic cable in Bayugan broke late on Wednesday.

The interconnection line was supposed to go around a loop when the cable broke, but the person from PLDT said another cable broke before Quezon town in Bukidnon at 4 a.m. yesterday.

“The double fiber break practically isolated the city from the rest of the country,” the person said.

PLDT could not ascertain yet if the break or a cut in the fiber optic lines were intentional as in due to be a theft or not.

Bank operations were disrupted for about two hours from 9 a.m. on Thursday as depositors on the rush to beat the June 12 holiday weren’t able to transact with their respective banks.

Jose Manulig, president of the Davao City Bankers’ Association, said it was a systemic offline disruption “and everybody got hit.”

“Practically everybody was affected, our cellular and internet connections were off,” he told the BusinessMirror.

In the case of the RCBC Savings Bank managed by Manulig, the Bayantel said it also lost its connections to the Bukidnon area.

The other banks were connected by Smart Communications and Globelines. “We were offline when we opened, and by the second hour, connections were intermittent,” he said. “It was only after 12 noon that the connections stabilized.”

“The good thing is that we were still able to catch up with our clients. All’s well that ends well,” Manulig said.

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By- www.governmentvideo.com

InfoComm 09: Gepco Expands Fiber Offerings

Gepco is coming to InfoComm 09 with an enhanced line of fiber cable products including Neutrik OpticalCon and Amphenol TAC-4 and TAC-12 cable assemblies.
Gepco-manufactured Neutrik opticalCON connectors

As an authorized manufacturer of opticalCON cable assemblies, Gepco is terminating custom lengths of tactical fiber cables with Neutrik’s opticalCON connectors. Based on a standard optical LC-Duplex connection, Neutrik’s opticalCON increases the reliability and maximizes the uptime for fiber-optic connection systems. With the company’s recent introduction of IP65 rated model, the fiber-optic connector system has been upgraded for dust-tight and water jet protection.

In addition to the new Neutrik opticalCON cable assemblies, Gepco has added Amphenol TAC-4 (4-channel) and TAC-12 (12-channel) hermaphroditic connectors. These connectors are industry-standard, multichannel formats designed to withstand use and abuse in harsh environments.

As with all of the company’s fiber assemblies, both the Neutrik and Amphenol assemblies are factory terminated by Gepco and feature precision contacts that offer UPC quality to achieve –55dB return loss specifications.

“To meet the demands of the increasing amount of fiber optic applications in the broadcast and professional AV markets, we have expanded our fiber options to provide a wider variety of fiber interconnect solutions,” says Scott Fehl, Gepco’s product development and marketing manager. “Neutrik has a reputation for high-quality connector products and we are looking forward to being a part of that. The combination of Neutrik’s opticalCON and Gepco’s assembly capabilities will further provide our users with a reliable fiber-optic interconnect solution that can be manufactured and delivered quickly and on-time.”

The assemblies are joining the variety of fiber solutions that Gepco currently offers, including SMTPE 304M hybrid fiber camera cables (using Lemo or Canare brand connectors), ST/SC/LC multi-mode or single-mode snakes, indoor permanent installation cables, as well as tactical and portable-use cables.

As a service to our many customers, Wordofcables.com is publishing a monthly series of informative technical articles, with each one focusing on a particular technology. Our goal is to help our customers get better acquainted with the often confusing cables, connectors, and standards to be encountered out there. Tell us what you think of this article! We value your feedback. Reply back to Pradeep@worldofcables.com and give us your thoughts.