Insatiable marketplace demand for more digital data delivered faster might be a costly challenge for the cable companies, Internet service providers and telecoms that must build the infrastructure to meet that demand, but it’s a boon for businesses that have developed ways to maximize existing infrastructure.
Driven by the proliferation of data-rich devices like smartphones and tablets and the increased use of video streaming, gaming and HD TV, marketplace demand is also pushing innovation in a host of arenas.
The battle over who will deliver more of that data intensified recently when Industry Canada announced that the highly coveted 700MHz broadband spectrum will be made available to telecoms and smaller independent mobile in an open auction. (See “Data overload” – BIV issue 1169; March 20-26.)
Victoria’s Vecima Networks makes some of the key components used for cable TV and broadband Internet.
It recently landed a contract with a major silicon maker to use a chip it developed for high-density broadband cable transmitters. The transmitters – also called modulators – are part of the translation of light signals on fibre optic systems to electric signals on the coaxial cable that brings the signal to the home or office.
Vecima president Sumit Kumar said bandwidth demand means more modulators at higher densities have to be deployed.
“To provide that level of service, a cable company would require many, many modulators to provide that amount of content to their subscribers. We’re seeing service offerings reaching 100 megabits [mb] per second per customer in a cable network. We expect that to grow more toward a gigabit per second [1,024 mb] per subscriber.”
Innovation in other areas that can increase data delivery efficiency is also growing.
For example, apps for smartphones and tablets can be optimized to reduce “chatter” between them and the Internet, which uses up unnecessary amounts of data.
“A well-designed app can help reduce network congestion,” said Alan Jones, vice-president of global sales for Vancouver app developer Atimi Software.
Meanwhile, companies like Optelian Access Networks use light-fracturing techniques that can send more data through existing fibre optics.
“We have products that will allow you to send multiple streams of data across the fibre,” said Optelian marketing manager Jack Dillard. “So instead of being able to send one, you can send up to 40 or 80, so it’s now 40 times more efficient or 80 times.”
The U.S.-based company manufactures its fibre optics hardware in Ottawa and recently bought Vancouver’s Versawave Technologies, which makes some of the components used in Optelian’s systems.
The advent of 4K TV – which has four times the data requirements of regular HD TV – promises to add to the broadband delivery burden.
The Cisco Visual Networking Index has predicted that 90% of all web traffic will be video by 2014.
Industry Canada’s decision to auction off the 700MHz spectrum will allow telecoms like Telus (TSX:T) to maximize new LTE infrastructure at lower costs.
But it’s a bit like a municipality getting a new water reservoir to address a population explosion. It still has to either build more pipes or find ways of getting more volume through existing ones or both.
Fortunately, North America still has a robust broadband backbone, thanks to an overbuild of fibre optics 10 years ago.
In November, BCNet and CANARIE, the provincial and national organizations responsible for maintaining broadband Internet networks for universities and other post secondary institutes, showed that the backbone still has good capacity.
As part of an experiment to test the limits of data transmission across existing fibre optics, the University of Victoria’s computing centre pushed one petabyte of particle physics data across 212 kilometres of fibre optics at 95 gigabits per second over 24 hours.
That’s the equivalent of 13 years of HDTV video moving at six movies per second. Those speeds were achieved with the use of 100-gigabit transponders, which are 10 times faster than the 10-gigabit transponders most providers currently use. (Transponders send and receive the light signals that travel through fibre optic cables.)
Jim Ghadbane, CANARIE’s chief technical officer, said the experiment demonstrated two things: 100-gig technology is viable and real, and it can be delivered over already deployed infrastructure.
But chokepoints remain in the “backhaul” for broadband Internet and, in particular, wireless networks. Cable companies, Internet service providers and telecoms are scrambling to break these bottlenecks to keep pace with the exploding demand for data.
Said Chris Langdon, Telus’ vice-president of products and services, “One of the big drivers of the future will be the introduction of super-high-definition television.” •
