Networking

Image: ACCC
Even though they only make up a small portion of its customer base, there has been quite the shift in how users are connecting to NBN on plans offering speeds at or in excess of 100Mbps.
In the latest edition of the ACCC’s NBN Wholesale Market Indicators Report, almost 43,000 users moved away from 100/40Mbps during the quarter. At the same time, over 113,000 users moved onto NBN’s 100/20Mbps plan that is labelled as Home Fast, over 3,000 took up the 250/25Mbps Home Superfast plan, and the user base of those on 500-1000Mbps/50Mbps plans increased by 2,600.
This is a significant increase on the 45,000 customers that took up the new Home plans in the prior instalment of the report.
Not to be left out entirely, NBN’s older fast plans also saw some growth, with 379 extra connections on 250/100Mbps plans, an increase of 90 customers on 500/200Mbps, and 38 extra lines signed up to a 1000/400Mbps plan.
“It is good to see a continuing increase in the number of products on offer, giving savvy consumers a range of differing plans to choose from,” ACCC chair Rod Sims said.
Over the quarter, 387,410 new services were connected, with the total number of 12/1Mbps connections falling by 25,000, while 86,000 additional lines took up 25/5Mbps, and the 50Mbps plan total increased by 234,000.
Following the merger of TPG and Vodafone, this is the first report that has combined Vodafone’s NBN market share with TPG. Vodafone’s NBN connections accounted for approximately 2% of the market.

Telstra’s market share, meanwhile, was slightly down to 45.7%, followed by TPG Telecom with 24.4%, Optus had 15.4% of the market, Vocus had 7.2%, and cruising along with just under 4% market share was the recently listed Aussie Broadband.
The ACCC added the total capacity (CVC) purchased by retails increased by 10% to just over 20Tbps.
“CVC per user also increased over the quarter from 2.47Mbps to 2.59Mbps, a near 5% increase since last quarter,” the ACCC said.
“The latest CVC figures reflect NBN Co’s extension of its temporary offer of additional 40% CVC capacity to RSPs, at no additional cost, in response to the COVID pandemic.”
NBN said last month it would dial down its CVC boost over the coming two months.
Using a new baseline that is calculated as the difference between a retailer’s capacity usage at the beginning of the September billing period compared to that in February, NBN will offer retailers 75% of that difference in December, and 50% in January next year.
“NBN Co’s tapering of COVID-19 CVC Credit offer to internet retailers recognises that peak data demand is returning to normal forecast levels of growth,” the company said at the time.
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The majority of financially vulnerable Brazilians performs key daily tasks including study and work exclusively via their smartphones, according to a study from the Center of Studies on Information and Communication Technologies (Cetic.br), the research arm of the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br)
This is the latest study of a research series into technology habits of users after the emergence of the pandemic, which utilizes indicators from the center’s pre-Covid studies on tech adoption.
The sample size of the research is 101 million Internet users, which corresponds to 83% of Brazilian users aged 16 or over. The latest survey was carried out between September 10 and October 1. It considers the Brazilian socioeconomic class system ranging from the elite (class A), the upper-middle class (class B), the lower middle class (class C), the working-class poor (class D) and the extremely poor and unemployed (class E).
According to the survey results, 74% of Internet users in Brazil from the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid, the classes D and E access the web exclusively via smartphones. By comparison 11% of rich Brazilians, from classes A and B, use phones exclusively to access the Internet.
Exclusive of smartphones to study is also more frequent among the poorest Brazilians: 54% stated they only use their phones to carry out educational activities remotely. This compared with 43% of the users from the class C, and 22% among wealthier Brazilians.
READ MORE: Pandemic puts spotlight on digital inequality in Brazil
Conversely, the use of notebooks, desktops and tablets as the main type of equipment for remote education is greater among the classes A and B (66%). Use of such types of equipment is less likely among class C students (30%) and the most financially vulnerable (11%).

“The lack of digital resources to access classes and remote activities is one of the main aspects that can affect the continuity of educational routines during the pandemic”, said Alexandre Barbosa, manager at Cetic.br.
“The disparities in access to ICT among students of different socioeconomic profiles also create unequal opportunities for learning”, he added. Barriers cited by participants around remote education included the difficulty to address questions with teachers (38%) and the lack of, or low quality of the Internet connection (36%).
Reasons most cited by wealthier respondents for not following up on remote educational activities among wealthier Brazilians, the main reasons cited for lack of interest to study remotely were lack of enjoyment to study remotely or not managing to do so from a distance (43%); household duties (38%) and lack of motivation (35%).
Among users on lower incomes, often cited reasons for not having the encouragement to study online included the need to look for work (63%), household chores (58%) and the lack of equipment to access classes (48%).
When it comes to work, the Cetic.br research found that approximately 23 million people were working remotely. Over half of Brazilian remote workers (52%) belong to classes A and B and most used a notebook to work. Conversely, 84% of Internet users who worked remotely used their smartphones to do so.
Separate research from Cetic.br released in August found that there has been an increase in Internet access among Brazil’s classes D and E. This was mostly driven by e-commerce, entertainment, education and digital access to government services. More

Special feature

The Rise of Industrial IoT
Infrastructure around the world is being linked together via sensors, machine learning and analytics. We examine the rise of the digital twin, the new leaders in industrial IoT (IIoT) and case studies that highlight the lessons learned from production IIoT deployments.
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Enterprises are likely to initially see the most benefit from 5G mmWave technology, but the use cases have been largely paused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recall that 5G has two flavors, 5G mmWave and Sub-6 GHz. The former gives you blazing speeds over a short distance and work great in buildings, factories, airports and stadiums. The latter provides more coverage at lower speeds.
What is 5G? Everything you need to know about the new wireless revolution | Could 5G rescue the world’s economy from a coronavirus recession? | Compared: 5G data plans from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg touted the company’s millimeter wave-based Ultra-Wideband network. He said:

We took a leapfrog with 19 more cities, and we are now 55 cities for mobility. We have 43 stadiums and 7 airports. We just continue to augment our Ultra-Wideband Network, which is just giving a huge, new experience when it comes to capabilities, when it comes to speed, latency and, of course, throughput.

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Here’s the problem: Stadiums and airports are empty due to COVID-19. The reality is that few of us have experienced 5G mmWave.
Nevertheless, industry players are bullish on 5G mmWave, but the real wins are going to be in enterprises.
T-Mobile US President of Technology Neville Ray said the carrier will use mmWave when it makes sense, but it’ll be largely a business play.

We’ll use millimeter wave where it makes sense, and one of those environments is going to be in-building. And that’s a great way for us to attack 5G experience indoors, especially for the enterprise.

Qualcomm is betting that mmWave will have a big role in proving the 5G case, but Manish Tripathi, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm, noted that the rollout is ongoing.
According to Qualcomm, 2021 will be a big year for 5G mmWave deployments. “5G mmWave is compelling in a crowded area and the user experience you get across the board is unprecedented,” said Tripathi.
Qualcomm
Note Qualcomm’s best areas for 5G mmWave include indoor enterprises, venues, transportation hubs, fixed wireless and industrial IoT.
Tripathi isn’t wrong, but airports, convention centers, stadiums and city centers are largely sidelined due to COVID-19. The best use case for 5G mmWave at the moment is industrial IoT.
Bottom line: The 5G mmWave business case will have to wait until the new normal post COVID-19 emerges. More

With NBN set to pay its retailers a series of rebates for missing service standards, such as late connections and fault rectifications, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is looking to regulate the same for non-NBN network operators for its next wholesale agreement
Opening the consultation process for its draft regulation on Tuesday, ACMA said it is looking to introduce a new set of rules that require rebates paid by broadband wholesalers to retailers to be passed through to consumers as either “direct compensation or through measures that mitigate the detriment experienced by consumers”.
Although NBN would be contractually obligated by its next wholesale agreement to pay rebates, ACMA said it did not have “sufficient confidence” that those rebates would flow to consumers.
“In practice it will be problematic for network operators such as NBN Co to monitor and enforce pass-through conditions on their access seekers,” it said.
The regulator added that it could force retailers to pass through rebate benefits to their consumers.
“In consultation with the Minister and the ACCC, the ACMA has decided to introduce retail pass-through regulations that will complement wholesale pass-through contractual arrangements,” it said.
“This will bridge the gap between suppliers paying rebates and retail customers receiving flow-on benefits when service standards are not met at the wholesale level.”

ACMA added that indirect compensation, such as movie ticket vouchers, gift cards, or concert tickets, were not considered as meeting the requirements of the regulation.
“They do not provide a direct monetary compensation or mitigate the customer’s detriment,” it said.
ACMA is also looking to force telcos to publish minimum service level commitments and remedies if those conditions are not met. The regulator said this would allow customers to compare commitments and performance of telcos before they select a service.
“These new rules will require telcos offering fixed broadband services to be transparent about their service commitments and remedies they are providing their customers, and report on their performance against these,” ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said.
ACMA is accepting submissions on its proposals until December 9, with the rules to enter into force in early 2021.
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Dell Technologies is picking up its high-performance computing pace with a series of systems designed for use cases such as genomics, digital manufacturing and artificial intelligence.
The company is rolling out the following:
Ready Solution for HPC Genomics, systems designed to expedite genomic analysis into production. See: How the world’s largest and fastest supercomputers are being used to understand the coronavirus
Ready Solution for Digital Manufacturing with Altair Hyperworks Unlimited for simulations and product design.
HPC and AI as-a-services efforts that meld manage services, hosting, co-location and on-demand resources. Initial partners include DXC Technology, R Systems and Verne Global.
Thierry Pellegrino, vice president of business strategy for Dell’s server and infrastructure unit, said the company’s goal is to democratize HPC. Pellegrino cited a series of HPC customers that improved productivity with ready-made HPC systems.
HPC is a hotly contested area among legacy vendors since it’s high-margin and highlights what’s possible with cutting-edge hardware.
Here’s a look at Dell’s HPC strategy.  More

The last time I commuted to an office outside my home, Bill Clinton had just been sworn in as President, Windows 95 was still in beta, and I had finally replaced my dial-up modem with a sizzling fast DSL connection to the Internet. I can’t say I miss much about that era.
Anyway, a few years into my work-from-home career, back in the Cretaceous period (or whatever 1996 is now called), I acquired this huge modular desk, made by a Swedish company called Kinnarps. It was not cheap, but I have more than gotten my money’s worth out of it after dragging it to five new homes in three different states over the past 20-something years.

That’s really a lot of desk space.

Home Office Tours

This desk was made for a writer, with the main working position being diagonal. That leaves plenty of room for a very large monitor to sit in the corner of my office, with keyboard, mouse, and other accoutrements on a dedicated workspace in front of the monitor’s space. With the help of a very large crank, I can raise or lower either surface to get things ergonomically aligned. Meanwhile, the rest of the desk wraps around behind me, with a conference table-sized surface where I can unbox new PCs. That surface typically has a dedicated workstation, which I use for testing new software.
A workspace that size requires dedicated office space. One of the advantages of living in the sprawling Southwestern United States is that a dedicated office isn’t a budget-busting feature.
When it comes to hardware, I’m partial to proven technologies that don’t cost a fortune. As you’ll see from this list, I’m overjoyed to find something useful at a discount, and I love a great deal. But I refuse to buy cheap gear.

I used to be a dual-monitor aficionado, with 24-inch displays arranged side by side on my desk. No more.
Today I still have two monitors available, but I prefer an alternative arrangement. My main display is a massive 38-inch Dell U3818DW UltraSharp, which sits a comfortable 27 inches away from me. It’s capable of snapping two app windows, each at 1920X1600 resolution, alongside one another.

That’s a 38-inch curved Dell UltraSharp display, with a 14-inch Dell Latitude 7400 to its right.

I can hear you now: I thought you said two monitors…
Oh, right. The second display is the built-in 14-inch screen on my laptop, which drives the main display. Here are the details for everything on my desk.

I bought this notebook from the Dell Outlet early in 2020, because honestly the price was irresistible for a laptop with 32 GB of RAM, an 8th Generation Intel Core i7 CPU, and a 512GB SSD. It’s turned out to be one of my all-time favorite PCs.
This laptop, like its owner, was originally anticipating a heavy travel schedule this year, racking up tens of thousands of air miles. That didn’t happen, obviously, but it’s earned its place on my desktop.
Note that this model is not the same as the Latitude 7400 2-in-1, which has a display that can fold back to turn into a tablet. But as a pure laptop, it’s well built and has performed flawlessly.
$1,202 at Amazon $1,499 at Walmart

When I upgraded from a pair of 24-inch displays to a 34-inch curved Dell display I was impressed, but I wasn’t tempted to trade up to the 38-inch display until a few years later, after a friend raved about the impact of upgrading. Boy am I glad I did that. It’s a nearly perfect fit on my desk, and the extra real estate means I have nearly 25% more pixels to work with.
The laptop display sits off to the side, where I keep Slack and Teams within my peripheral vision but out of the way of whatever task I happen to be concentrating on at the moment. I also use the laptop display to occasionally tune in YouTube or a live broadcast that I need to monitor.
$970 at Amazon $959 at Adorama $999 at B&H Photo-Video

No one is ever going to call this peripheral a rock star. It’s more of a roadie, to be honest. But it gets the job done. It sits unobtrusively in the background, connecting the laptop to the display with a pair of Thunderbolt-compatible USB Type-C connections that have no trouble with the high external display resolution, the wired network, or whatever else I throw at it.
$205 at Amazon

When it comes to input devices, I’ve been impressed by Microsoft designs for years. On my main desktop, I have a Microsoft Modern Keyboard with Fingerprint ID. It has the same clean grey-on-grey design and the same smooth feel and responsive action as the Surface Keyboard (which I keep as a spare). The obvious difference is the fingerprint reader, which offers a handy authentication option. The not-so-obvious difference is a micro-USB port for recharging the built-in battery and using the keyboard in USB mode.
$99 at Amazon $100 at Walmart $99 at Adorama

I am told this was built for gamers, which I am most assuredly not. I absolutely love its stability, as well as the size and shape. Both the keyboard and mouse can be connected using a micro USB cable or paired with Bluetooth, which is a huge plus on occasions when Bluetooth isn’t available or isn’t working.
$99 at Amazon $117 at Walmart $100 at Best Buy

The nice thing about having a desk that wraps completely around is that I am able to keep a workbench handy for evaluating software, repairing PCs, testing docking stations, and reviewing laptops. The core elements are all hand-me-downs, but it doesn’t feel that way.

The second desk is mostly a lab bench, but it’s comfortable enough to work at.

This used to be my day-in-day-out desktop PC. It’s going on five years old, with a 6th Generation Intel Core i7, but has been upgraded multiple times with much better storage, memory, and video than the original. This is probably the fifth XPS desktop I’ve had in this office. It’s a timeless design and the case is easy to open, with everything laid out cleanly inside.
It’s noteworthy that I’ve never spilled a drop of blood when repairing or upgrading components in this PC. That’s certainly not the case with other desktops I’ve dealt with.
View Now at Dell

This is the 34-inch hand-me-down monitor that used to be on my main desktop. It has enough inputs that I can use it easily for testing purposes without having to fuss with cables.
$600 at Amazon $672 at Walmart $109 at Adorama

Image: Sebaztian Barns/ZDNet
This is my go-to around-the-house notebook, originally purchased in 2018 at a deep discount on eBay from someone who had buyer’s remorse after a couple months. With a 7th Generation Intel Core i5 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD, it’s a perfect proxy for a mainstream business PC.
It’s built like an absolute tank, which I love. I’ll probably replace it with a Surface Book 3 when the time comes.
$1,468 at Amazon $1,600 at Best Buy $1,600 at Abt Electronics

This one’s here for compatibility testing. It has the infamous “butterfly” keyboard, which I loathe, but fortunately I mostly use it with an Apple keyboard and Magic Trackpad when I’m testing a Mac app or service. I run Windows 10 and a copy of the previous version of MacOS in Parallels virtual machines. I wish it had support for fingerprint sign-in, and I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve absentmindedly stabbed the screen with a fingertip before remembering that Macs don’t have touchscreens.
I bought this one as an Apple refurb, but it was inditinguishable from a new Mac.
$1,300 at Best Buy $1,249 at Adorama $1,299 at B&H Photo-Video

Remember when the paperless office was going to be a thing? Ha ha ha. Admittedly, I use less paper than I used to, but I still have banker’s boxes filled with contracts, receipts, and legal documents that just refuse to be digitized, even as we enter the third decade of the 21st Century.

This table isn’t always so uncluttered.
The single most important peripheral, of course, is the router that keeps the home and office networks humming along.

This router gets great reviews, but the reason I bought it was a recommendation from a networking expert I trusted. I have no regrets. This device sits in the corner looking like an extra from a Star Wars movie and does its job without complaining. I can’t even remember the last time I had to reboot it.
It gets regular firmware updates, too, which is rare for networking hardware.
$238 at Amazon $229 at Walmart $250 at Best Buy

A friend recommended an earlier model of this to me, and I haven’t regretted taking him up on the recommendation. This is really great hardware for turning paper documents into bits that can then be uploaded to the cloud. I use it less often than I used to, thanks to smartphone apps that can scan a one-page document faster and without the hassle.
But if your goal is to purge a few banker’s boxes full of paper documents, this is a great alternative.
$1,098 at Walmart

The irony of the paperless office is that you occasionally need to turn digitized bits back into ink on paper. This is a solid basic printer that has reliable Wi-Fi and can do two-sided printing from PCs, Macs, and smartphones. It was just ridiculously inexpensive, too, at around 80 bucks from my local Best Buy.
$169 at Walmart $130 at Best Buy

Naturally, I have two phones, one running iOS, the other an Android device. I can’t afford to take sides, when my readers are more or less equally divided between the two camps.
One thing that makes it possible to swap between the two devices without too much disruption is a service called Line2, which lets me use the same number for calls and text messages on either device.

I recently replaced my two-year-old iPhone XS with a gently used 11 Pro. The biggest difference is the camera, which was seriously showing its age on the XS. After previously using the gargantuan Samsung Galaxy S8+ and S9+, I’ve come to appreciate the more modest size of this one. And nothing in the newly announced line of 5G-enabled iPhones appeals to me, which means this one will probably last me another two years.
$999 at Amazon $1,000 at Best Buy $999 at Apple

Everything that Nomad Goods makes has a seriously understated elegance that reveals itself over time. I had a brown Horween leather case on my last iPhone, and I look forward to this black case finally getting the patina that one had after two years.
View Now at Amazon

One of the biggest problems with some wireless chargers is the need to get a phone aligned so it charges properly. This stand eliminates that challenge completely, and it holds the phone at a perfect angle so I can see notifications and Caller ID as it charges.
View Now at Amazon

I’ve always had a soft spot for OnePlus, which was one of the first companies to aggressively build premium phones at affordable prices, typically half what a flagship phone from a better-known device maker might cost. I picked this one up on Swappa at a deep discount from someone who had buyer’s remorse after owning it for only two months.
Supposedly, the newly combined Sprint/T-Mobile have rolled out 5G coverage in my part of the world, but I have yet to see it on this phone. Otherwise, though, it’s been a very nice way to stay in touch with developments in Android World. I just wish it supported wireless charging.
$999 at OnePlus

I’ve spent most of my (mumble mumble) years in journalism as a writer. (Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about the time I “liberated” an IBM Selectric typewriter from an employer who had treated me poorly.) But I have always had an appreciation for high-quality audio, and over the decades I have become far more comfortable with sharing my thoughts in ways that go beyond the written word.

I don’t care how great they sound, Apple’s AirPods are just dorky looking, and Microsoft’s Surface Earbuds are just a wee bit too big for comfort. That, in a nutshell, is how I wound up with these Samsung wireless earbuds, which look unobtrusive and work well for phone calls and podcasts while Lucy the office dog and I go out for daily walks.
$120 at Amazon More

T-Mobile is betting that the launch of its TVision service will drive its 5G mobile subscriptions as well as set it up for home broadband services as the company reported strong third quarter results.
CEO Michael Sievert said TVision for T-Mobile will be about positioning to be more of a connectivity provider in the home. The plan to be an over-the-top (OTT) provider comes as T-Mobile has integrated the Sprint acquisition well and accelerated its synergy timelines.
Sievert said on T-Mobile’s third quarter earnings conference call that video is a key part of becoming a bigger broadband player. 
Referring to TVision, Sievert said:

We’re coming soon with home broadband. We’re serious about home broadband. It’s going to be an important way that we grow this business and make money. And you have to have the full suite of services to really be able to serve customers there. I also think there’s potential benefits on the mobile side. Customers count on us for their connectivity. They love our brand. We’re able to deliver in this product a great, simple, elegant solution that we’re investing in, because you’re a T-Mobile customer, so they get a great value. And we’re just smashing a bunch of the pain points in this industry. And this industry is so full of them, as we talked about at our launch. So we’re very excited. We’re just getting started.
One of the other things I’ve talked about for a long time is we also intend to be a great partner to media companies and an ally, because we’re not a media company. We’re a pure-play network and connections company.
We’re in it for the long haul. But we’re doing it to delight customers, and we’re doing it to set up a home broadband business which is going to be where a big piece of the profit pool is.

Add it up and Sievert is counting on video to be a building block for broader connectivity services and not necessarily a big profit driver. That approach is going to put pricing pressure on other video services.
If successful, T-Mobile may also become a key connectivity provider amid remote work and education as consumers look for more competition for cable incumbents.
The TVision comments come as T-Mobile reported strong third quarter results and better-than-expected guidance. T-Mobile reported earnings of $1.3 billion, or $1 a share, on revenue of $19.3 billion. The company added 2,035,000 total net additions with 689,000 postpaid phone additions.

T-Mobile ended the quarter with 100.4 million customers.
The company also said it will deliver more than $1.2 billion of synergies from the Sprint merger in 2020. So far, 15% of Sprint’s postpaid customer traffic has been moved to the T-Mobile network.
Other key items:
Postpaid churn was .90% and prepaid churn was 2.86%.
Postpaid accounts were 25.6 million at the end of the quarter.
T-Mobile saved $600 million in network synergies due to avoiding new site builds.
The company is accelerating its marketing consolidation plans and rationalization of retail stores.
The iPhone 12 upgrade cycle will be more spread out and also be promotional.
Here’s T-Mobile’s outlook for the rest of 2020. More

When you think of cloud-based businesses, telecommunications companies may not be the first ones to spring to your mind. They should be. Telecom, thanks to software-defined networking (SDN) and Network functions virtualization (NFV), runs on the cloud. Now, Canonical, best known for Ubuntu Linux, has won a significant customer for its Charmed OpenStack: Leading Russian telecom MTS.

With over 80 million mobile subscribers, MTS is a serious player, and the company needed a serious cloud for its network. With this new partnership, MTS aims to decrease its time-to-market and speed up the deployment of new services such as 5G. And, of course, as everyone does with the cloud, it wants to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of cloud infrastructure. 
MTS is doing this with Charmed OpenStack. Based on the popular open-source OpenStack cloud, this stack runs on a combination Metal-as-a-Service (MAAS), Juju Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM), OpenStack Charms, and the Ceph open-source storage stack. 
OpenStack has long been the cloud of choice for telecoms. “All around the world, carriers love OpenStack. What started as an agile framework to deploy and manage network functions has grown to become a preferred platform for managing the evolution of networks from LTE to 5G,” said Mark Collier, Open Infrastructure Foundation’s COO. Indeed, last year, Canonical won a contract with BT, formerly British Telecom, to use Ubuntu Linux and OpenStack to deploy 5G in the UK and around the globe.
A big reason for Canonical’s market success is that Charmed OpenStack is designed to be an easy-to-deploy and use carrier-grade private cloud implementation. It comes with enhanced SDN handling and edge compute capabilities. 
While financial details haven’t been revealed, Canonical’s pleased by the deal. “Canonical is truly excited to partner with MTS and provide a platform on which they can roll out their 5G network,” said Regis Paquette, Canonical’s VP of Global Alliances. 
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