08
NEWS IN BRIEF
Bob Falconer joins
Nextgenaccess as
Non-Executive Director
Nextgenaccess Ltd., a UK wholesale provider of full fibre broadband
infrastructure has announced the appointment of Bob Falconer as
Non-Executive Director. His appointment is in line with the company’s
aggressive growth strategy as it ramps up the expansion of its core
fibre network and the roll-out of affordable full fibre services to
businesses and the public sector, delivered through third party sales
channels including telecom resellers, network installers and operators.
A veteran of the telecoms industry, Bob Falconer led Gamma
Telecom for 15 years from the position of a start-up wholesale voice
provider in 2003 to a substantial innovative and disruptive player in the
UK B2B telecoms sector, consistently growing EBITDA, profit and cash
over the period. In October 2014 he oversaw a highly successful IPO of
the business on AIM with the share price growing by a factor of four to
May 2018 and a market cap of approximately £700 million. Gamma
subsequently won the AIM ‘Company of the Year’ award for 2017/18.
“This is a very exciting time to keep involved in the telecoms
industry,” said Bob Falconer. “The reality of fibre to the premises and
5G is driving unprecedented change and with this Nextgenaccess
has a compelling and differentiated full fibre offering. I relish helping
the company’s excellent senior management team maximise the
substantial market opportunities and growth potential on offer. I
hope my industry and management experience can bring value
and help ensure Nextgenaccess achieves its business goals. An
integral part of this is the forging of strong mutually profitable
relationships with channel partners.”
Nextgenaccess recently secured a £22 million investment
from the National Digital Infrastructure Fund (NDIF) to
develop its UK 10Gb fibre network. NDIF, a commercial
fund established in 2017 by Amber Infrastructure Group,
has acquired a significant minority shareholding in NGA.
The Amber Infrastructure Group has over £8 billion under
management with interests in energy, property and
transport. n
Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson achieve fibre-like results with
wireless backhaul at their Service Center in Athens
Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom are the first to successfully
demonstrate a millimetre wave link with a data transmission rate
of 40Gbps in a joint innovation project at the Deutsche Telekom
Service Center in Athens.
An important milestone in the evolution from today’s 10Gbps
reality toward the 100Gbps future, the partners achieved four
times greater data throughput compared to current commercial
millimetre wave solutions to prove the commercial viability of future
wireless backhaul technology.
The test also focused on the stringent latency requirements in
5G network architecture to support low latency or ultra-low latency
use cases. The round-trip latency performance of the link tested was
less than 100 microseconds, confirming the positive contribution of
wireless backhaul technologies to satisfy network-specific latency
targets.
Alex Jinsung Choi, SVP Strategy & Technology Innovation,
Deutsche Telekom, said: “A high-performance transport connection
will be key to support high data throughput and enhanced customer
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experience in next-generation networks. While fibre is an important
part of our portfolio, it’s not the only option for backhaul. Together
with our partners, we have demonstrated fibre-like performance is
also possible with wireless backhauling/X-Haul solutions. This offers
an important extension of our portfolio of high-capacity, high-
performance transport options for the 5G era.”
Per Narvinger, Head of Product Area Networks, Ericsson, says:
“Microwave continues to be a key technology for mobile transport
by supporting the capacity and latency requirements of 4G and
future 5G networks. Our joint innovation project shows that higher
capacity microwave backhaul will be an important enabler of high-
quality mobile broadband services when 5G becomes a commercial
reality.”
The live trial was completed at the Deutsche Telekom Service
Center in Athens over a hop distance of 1.4 kilometres in the
millimetre wave (E-band) spectrum. The technical setup included
the use of Ericsson’s latest mobile transport technology including
Ericsson’s MINI-LINK 6352 microwave solution and Router 6000. n
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