Press Release

Telxius, the leading digital telecommunications infrastructure operator, has teamed up with NJFX, the carrier-neutral Cable Landing Station (CLS) colocation campus in Wall, New Jersey, to give customers on-demand access to redundant subsea cable infrastructure across the Atlantic and Latin America. This collaboration allows Telxius to provide its customers with fully diverse global solutions through submarine cables landing at or nearby NJFX and serve subsea cable restoration needs between cable systems landing at NJFX and the Telxius’ Virginia Beach cable landing station.

Telxius is now offering a direct terrestrial fibre route between its CLS in Virginia Beach to NJFX’s campus. This new, unique route is the most direct link between NJFX and Telxius VA Beach CLS, extending the capabilities and services related to Telxius’ Marea, Dunant and Brusa subsea cable systems. Customers in key hubs in Chicago, Montreal, New York, Richmond and Toronto will benefit from multiterabit capacity, a wide range of advanced services on next-generation subsea infrastructure and enhanced diverse connectivity across international digital hubs. This vital link bypasses Ashburn, VA, satisfying the requirements of customers seeking diversity from overly dense infrastructure in Ashburn.

“We are continually finding new ways to enhance the reliability and resiliency of our global infrastructure. Our collaboration with NJFX gives customers rapid access to critical infrastructure and satisfies the diversity and low latency needs of some of the most demanding customers in the financial sector,” said Gerardo Bonilla, Head of Sales at Telxius. “NJFX has a track record of supporting some of the largest players in international networking and is continually growing its ecosystem. We look forward to growing together and offering ultra-reliable global connectivity.

Telxius’ new presence at NJFX will provide NJFX’s customers with direct access to the Telxius global submarine network consisting of over 80,000 km of high-capacity fibre optic submarine cables with diverse terrestrial backhauls. This will allow NJFX’s customers access to Telxius complete array of services Including Tier-1 IP Transit, global capacity, colocation and security solutions. Telxius’ low latency, diverse and robust Atlantic routes are powered by almost 100 PoPs in 18 countries, 25 landing stations and two communications hubs connecting to world-leading data centres. By joining the NJFX interconnection platform, Telxius and its customers gain direct, on-demand interconnection with Havfrue/AEC-2, Seabras-1, TGN1 and TGN2, providing diverse connectivity across both the Atlantic and to Latin America.

“Telxius provides customers with fresh connectivity options to crucial European digital hubs as well as Latin American markets that are expanding quickly. The ‘trusted middle mile’ of interconnected independent networks is improved thanks to our cooperation with Telxius,” said Gil Santaliz, CEO of NJFX. “It’s wonderful to see new redundancy to boost service quality throughout the Atlantic and Latin America as we work to increase uptime and lessen the effects of service interruptions. We are thrilled to have Telxius at NJFX and to be collaborating with them to provide clients with the finest services.”

Enterprise, content, media, government, and communications providers can take advantage of redundancy, decreased latency, and high-quality connectivity with fewer global points of failure thanks to NJFX. Through a physical presence and access to the Meet-Me-Room (MMR) within its Tier-3 CLS campus, NJFX ensures that each carrier network interconnection is designed and maintained with reliable architectural diversity. NJFX is home to some of the biggest and most cutting-edge companies in global networking.

Want to learn all the latest updates from the world of submarine connectivity? Join the experts in discussion at the upcoming Submarine Networks EMEA conference

Also in the news:
Understanding the telco’s role in the IoT market
Startup Stories: A new approach to telecoms consultancy
MTN Group joins the Telecom Infra Project’s Board of Directors

The post Telxius partners NJFX for Atlantic and Latin America subsea connectivity first appeared on Total Telecom.

NEWS

The demonstration saw robots assist soft fruit farmers in a variety of tasks, including picking and packing fruit and treating crops to deter pests

Today, BT has announced the successful deployment of a robotics platform and management system to support the agricultural project Robot Highways, enabling a fleet of robots to help automate the farming process.

Robot Highways is a project led by agricultural robot specialist Saga Robotics, aiming to explore the use of robots and automation to increase the efficiency of soft fruit agriculture. The plan is for various robots to perform several “essential, energy intensive physical farm processes such as picking and packing fruit and treating crops to reduce critical pests and diseases”, all while being powered by renewable energy.

In turn, the additional data generated by these robots can allow for more accurate forecasting, better business insights, and reduced agricultural waste for the farms.

Additional partners for the project the University of Lincoln, Berry Gardens Growers Ltd, Clock House Farm, University of Reading, and the Manufacturing Technology Centre, alongside BT. It is funded by Innovate UK, the non-departmental public body that provides funding to stimulate and support business-led innovation.

Making this smart farming vision a reality will be no small feat. High-quality connectivity infrastructure will be paramount to enabling the required IoT environment and this is where BT comes in. The operator has developed and tested the edge and cloud architecture that will be used to support this IoT infrastructure, though details of the specific technology provided was not announced.

“We’re delighted to be part of the Robot Highways project to demonstrate how BT can help the agricultural sector to automate by integrating robotics and other solutions on a single platform. As a leader in network-based platforms and edge-infrastructure we are ideally placed to support advanced robotic farming operations,” said John Davies, Chief Researcher at BT.

Supporting agriculture has become an increasingly important focus for BT in recent years. For example, BT has been providing connectivity and support for Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS), a Scottish agriculture firm specialising in TCEA (Total Controlled Environment Agriculture). IGS has built a vertical farm, with crops stacked on top of one another, with each crop’s specific microclimate managed digitally through mobile devices.

BT is not alone in its agricultural interest. Italian operator TIM, for example, last year partnered with a vineyard in Piedmont Langhe to provide 5G coverage and help enable automation and drone deployment.

The vendors also want their share of this agricultural opportunity. Particularly with the advent of private networks, telecoms vendors potentially offering digital services and solutions directly to agricultural players; Huawei, for example, announced last year that they were deploying an AI solution to a Chinese pig farm, capable of monitoring the condition of each individual animal.

As the farming industry continues to digitalise, the vital nature of high quality connectivity will likewise increase, creating a wealth of opportunities for the telcos that can sew their seeds first.

How are telcos evolving to capture opportunites in new verticals like agriculture? Join the industry in discussion at this year’s live Total Telecom Congress event

Also in the news:
Understanding the telco’s role in the IoT market
Startup Stories: A new approach to telecoms consultancy
MTN Group joins the Telecom Infra Project’s Board of Directors

The post BT demos automated agriculture using robots and IoT first appeared on Total Telecom.

As expected, Sky (Sky Broadband) has today made their new standalone Sky Stream TV product available to UK consumers, which uses your home broadband ISP and WiFi connection to stream Sky’s on-demand video content and live TV channels directly to your existing TV without a satellite dish (no engineer install necessary). The company previously said […]

Broadband and Cloud Gaming ISP ZYBRE has just become the latest internet provider to hop on to FullFibre Limited‘s new wholesale network (Fibre Heroes), which is in the process of deploying a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) service to “at least” 500,000 UK premises by 2025 (they’re building across 80+ towns). At present FullFibre Ltd’s network, which […]

With traditional telco revenues beginning to dry up, operators know they must evolve to survive – but how?

It has become increasingly apparent in recent years that existing telco business models are fundamentally flawed, with customers unable or unwilling to pay significantly greater sums for faster speeds alone.

As such, telcos are beginning to look further afield for new revenue streams, from creating their own content and even metaverse platforms to building suites of enterprise software solutions, aiming to usher in the era of Industry 4.0. The line between telco and techco are rapidly blurring together, with the world’s most innovative telcos seeking to transform themselves into more agile and diversified businesses to take full advantage of the capabilities generated by 5G, the Edge, and AI.

This myriad of diverse approaches begs the question: what should a telco business model look like in 2022? What role can connectivity providers play in an increasingly digital ecosystem and, more importantly, how can this make them money?

At this year’s Total Telecom Congress, the opening CxO Keynote Panel will discuss the fundamental question of ‘Building the “modern telco”’, exploring not only internal business transformation but also how to approach forging effective and innovative partnerships.

The panel will be moderated by Angel Dobardziev, Senior Director, European Consulting at IDC, who noted the paramount importance of this topic in the emerging ‘Digital-First era’.

“At IDC we believe that over the last few, and the next few, years we will have completed a shift from the Digital Transformation era to a Digital-First era, where revenues from digital business models become increasingly central to most industries. Telcos will remain central to the Digital-First era and have major opportunities to accelerate their growth via their focus on 5G, Edge, IoT Cloud, SD Network, and Network-as-a-Service (NaaS),” he explained.

“Whether telcos are able to capture these growth opportunities will depend not only on their investments in their respective value propositions and partnerships in these areas, but also their ability to effectively grow awareness among enterprise decision makers that they are credible providers – or enablers – of industry specific solutions that have these technology building blocks at their core.”

Joining Angel in discussion will be a trio of the industry’s leading telco executives, sharing their insights from their respective markets.

Speakers:

David Tudehope, Chief Executive Officer, Macquarie Telecom Group

Dr Rolf Nafziger, Senior Vice President, Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier

Babak Fouladi, Board Member – Chief Technology and Digital Officer, KPN

The telco landscape is changing and the industry must do likewise – and fast – if it is to reap the benefits of expensive infrastructure deployments and not be undercut by enterprising third parties.

Total Telecom Congress will take place live in the Business Design Centre in London on the 1st–2nd of November. It’s not too late to get your tickets! Book your place now.

Also in the news:
Understanding the telco’s role in the IoT market
Startup Stories: A new approach to telecoms consultancy
MTN Group joins the Telecom Infra Project’s Board of Directors

The post What makes a ‘modern telco’? A Total Telecom Congress Keynote teaser! first appeared on Total Telecom.

British-registered firm OneWeb, which is building a global constellation of compact Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast broadband satellites, has reached an agreement that will see the Panasonic Avionics Corporation work to market, sell, and support the rollout of their in-flight internet services to commercial airlines worldwide. OneWeb has so far launched 428 of their […]

Network provider Netomnia – supported by UK broadband ISP YouFibre – has today announced the start of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network rollout across three new locations including Newport (Wales), Huntingdon (Cambridgeshire) and Sleaford (Lincolnshire). The operator, which has already covered 265,000 UK premises with their optical fibre infrastructure (up from 210k in August 2022), currently […]

Ofcom’s latest Q2 2022 survey of UK consumer complaints has named ISP Shell Energy as attracting the most moans for both fixed line broadband and landline phone services, while BT (BTMobile) did the same for Pay Monthly mobile services and Virgin Media (VMO2) were on the naughty step for Pay TV. The regulator’s report only […]

Internet connectivity benchmarking firm Ookla, which maintains the popular Speedtest.net service, has updated their ranking of broadband performance in countries around the world to include internet speed rankings for some of the “world’s largest cities“. But London and Manchester in the UK appear nowhere near the top. Take note that speedtest based studies can be […]

Broadband ISP and network builder Ogi, which is currently investing £200m to roll-out a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across 150,000 premises in Wales by 2025, has introduced a series of measures to support staff during the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. The provider has revealed that around 70% of their staff are now eligible for the company’s […]