Networking

The New Zealand Commerce Commission (ComCom) has fined MyRepublic NZ$2,000 for breaching its obligations to provide annual financial information to the agency.
Only after being “pursued” for several months did MyRepublic hand over the information, the commission said. This is the second breach in two years.
ComCom uses fiscal information from the nation’s telcos that book more than NZ$10 million in revenue to apportion New Zealand’s Telecommunications Development Levy (TDL). The levy is put towards services such as the relay service for the deaf and hearing-impaired, broadband for rural areas, and improvements to 111 emergency calling services.
Should MyRepublic make it three breaches in three years, the commission said it would consider hauling the Singaporean telco to New Zealand High Court, where it could be fined NZ$300,000 for each breach.
“MyRepublic has now breached its TDL obligations for two years in a row,” said Telecommunications Commissioner Tristan Gilbertson.

“This is unacceptable — it undermines the integrity of the system and is unfair on the New Zealanders who depend on the critical infrastructure and services supported by TDL funds.”
MyRepublic was warned in August 2017 for breaching the Fair Trading Act, when it promoted its 1Gbps plan for two months before it was available, claimed its “gamer” service would not lag, and made incorrect representations of consumer rights.
At the end of last year, MyRepublic was the most complained about telco in Australia.
In broadband speed reports issued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, MyRepublic has been a consistent laggard in recent times.
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Juniper Networks and A10 Networks on Tuesday both reported slightly better-than-expected second quarter financial results. Despite an uncertain macro environment, demand has held steady, the companies reported, arguing the long-term outlook looks more promising. 
Juniper’s second quarter non-GAAP net income was $116.3 million, a decrease of 17 percent year-over-year. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share came to 35 cents. Net revenues were $1.086 billion, a decrease of 1 percent year-over-year, 
Analysts were expecting earnings of 34 cents per share on revenue of $1.05 billion. 
“We experienced solid demand during the June quarter, as our combination of technological differentiation and go- to-market execution drove a second consecutive quarter of positive order growth,” Juniper CEO Rami Rahim said in a statement. “While the global macro environment remains uncertain, the strategic importance of the global network has never been clearer and we remain confident regarding the long-term outlook for our business.”
For the third quarter, Juniper expects non-GAAP net income per share will be approximately 43 cents, plus or minus 5 cents. It expects revenue of approximately $1.125 billion, plus or minus $50 million.

The company expects to see sequential revenue and earnings growth thanks in part to strength within its service provider and cloud verticals — which could help offset uncertainty within the enterprise market. Juniper has a “healthy backlog,” according to CFO Ken Miller, and is “optimistic regarding our ability to navigate COVID-19 related supply chain challenges.”
Juniper also reported that its board of directors has declared a cash dividend of 20 cents per share to be paid on September 22.
A10 Networks also reported second quarter financial results coming in slightly ahead of estimates. 
Q2 non-GAAP net income per share came to 9 cents. Revenue was $52.5 million, up 7 percent year-over-year.
Analysts were expecting earnings of 8 cents on revenue of $52.1 million. 
“A10 continues to make progress on our business model transformation, resulting in improved earnings power, amidst an uncertain environment,” A10 CEO Dhrupad Trivedi said in a statement. “To date, we have successfully navigated the challenges related to the pandemic and associated economic disruptions. Demand remains strong, though sales cycles, particularly in Asia, have been elongated. Increasingly, our global footprint and customer mix serve as important and durable competitive advantages.”
The company was able to offset revenue declines from the Japan and Asia Pacific regions with improvements in North America and EMEA, Trivedi said. 
“We maintain a strong market position with service providers and their investment cycles which can last multiple years and result in variable demand levels within a 90-day period,” the CEO said. 

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The latest report by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) has revealed that there was a direct correlation between the coronavirus pandemic, and the complaints it received between March and June 2020.
The TIO’s systemic investigation report uncovered how there was an increase in complaints from mid-March by consumers about not being able to contact their providers. By early April, the average number of daily complaints by consumers being unable to reach their providers peaked at 130.
The TIO said its investigation showed it was around the same time when several providers with offshore operations were significantly affected by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, which resulted in consumers experiencing delays.
The TIO also saw from late March, a rise in complaints around faults and connections, specifically around slow internet speeds and dropouts, technicians missing their appointments, and delays in receiving equipment, such as modems. By mid-April, TIO received an average of 360 complaints about faults and connections a day.
“The rise in fault and connection complaints for internet services was steeper and longer than for mobile and landline services. The rise aligned with increased demand for internet services during the shift to home-based work and study,” the report stated.

Additionally, the TIO report highlighted how temporary relief measures by providers resulted in fewer complaints about debt-related issues, including financial hardship and repayment arrangement, between March and May 2020.
However, when debt-related complaints were received, the TIO said it was because consumers could not contact their provider, or when they could, they were informed that their provider was not prioritising billing enquiries and it resulted in consumers suffering financially.
The TIO also took the opportunity to acknowledged how there was a timely response by telecommunications providers, NBN, the government, and industry regulators when it came to providing temporary financial relief for consumers and businesses.
Some of these relief measures included NBN offering internet providers up to 40% of additional capacity at no cost until August 19, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) pausing its NBN entry-level access pricing and wholesale service standards inquiries, and NBN limiting the amount of maintenance it would do on its network.
The ACCC also recently granted NBN and five retailers — Telstra, Optus, TPG, Vodafone, and Vocus — authorisation to create a working group to handle network congestion and coordinate financial support for consumers and small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The pandemic has thrown the telecommunications industry and its consumers into a perfect storm. The delivery of reliable phone and internet services was challenged by the closure of overseas call centres and the move of telco operations staff to a work-from-home environment. This collided with our need to remain connected through reliable phone and internet services at a time of heightened uncertainty,” Ombudsman Judi Jones said. 
“The pandemic has stress-tested the industry and government relief measures and stretched the capacity of telco providers. It is encouraging to see the industry’s extension of the telecommunications hardship principles until the end of September and the steps providers have taken so far to respond to the financial impact on consumers.”
The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network CEO Teresa Corbin acknowledged how the report provided insight into the impact COVID-19 had on the telco sector, adding it also signalled the need for telcos to implement backup procedures to resolve problems quickly. 
“The TIO’s report shows the serious negative impacts that consumers can face when telco services fail and providers are slow to respond. Our phone and internet connections are essential services in these times and we need to ensure that providers treat them as such,” she said.
Related Coverage
NBN stumps up for AU$150 million COVID-19 relief fund
Money to be directed to low-income households with children at school and struggling small and medium-sized businesses.
Canberra amends laws allowing telcos to deploy cells on wheels during emergencies
Meanwhile, Labor has proposed that free internet access be given to students so they can learn online during the coronavirus pandemic.
Coronavirus response sees Telstra pause job cuts for six months
Telco to hire 1,000 temporary call centre workers in Australia and bring forward AU$500 million of 5G network spend.
Telstra makes all home broadband plans unlimited in response to coronavirus
Until the end of April, Telstra home broadband customers are without a data quota.
Telstra extends unlimited home broadband offer until the end of June
With the aim of supporting customers through COVID-19. More

I’m a diehard Chrome user, in large part because of its wide selection of extensions. As a Chrome user, I decided that it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could move to Safari, or at least survive a week.
In large part, this is a question of whether I can live with desktop Safari’s very limited library of extensions. Yes, Safari has extensions. When Safari is open, click on Safari in the Menu bar on the top left, then hit Safari Extensions. That will take you to the Mac App Store where you can download and install extensions. They’re there, but they’re extremely limited both in quantity and capability.
Also: Must-have Windows and Mac utilities, Parallels Toolbox and Parallels Access, get new features
When Big Sur comes out, Apple expects to change that with their WebExtensions API. This API is meant to open up desktop Safari’s access to extensions, providing an opportunity for far more extensions to be made available.
What’s particularly interesting is that although Apple has announced that MacOS 11, the upcoming Big Sur release, will not support older Macs, the upcoming Safari release with WebExtensions will run on Mojave and Catalina, making the enhanced Safari available to older machines.

I wanted to conduct an experiment to see how much the addition of WebExtensions benefits productivity. To do that, I’m converting to Safari for a week, prior to the upcoming Safari release. I’m going to see whether I can live with the meager set of extensions available now. Then, a few months after the new Safari is released, I’m going to repeat the experiment to see how (or if) my productivity improves with the added extension selection.
Sunday morning

Okay. Here’s the big step. I just went into System Preferences- >General and changed my default browser from Chrome to Safari. And may the Lord have mercy on my soul.
My first stop was Safari Extensions on the Mac App Store. I went down the entire list (it’s not very long) and chose those very few extensions that exist in both Chrome and Safari: Pocket, my password manager, Todoist, Evernote Web Clipper… and that was it. None of my other Chrome extensions (or extensions that do what my other Chrome extensions do) exist in Safari.
I jump between three or four Macs constantly, so it’s important that all my bookmarks, launchers, and settings sync up. When I first launched Safari, I found that the couch Mac mini and my development machine had a completely different set of bookmarks.
This is fixable, fortunately. All it takes is a quick visit to System Preferences on each Mac. If you’re using Mojave or earlier, go to the iCloud icon. If you’re using Catalina, click the Apple ID icon. Then, just turn on the Safari sync option. Safari does sync, but as I discovered later, it doesn’t sync everything. Not by a long shot.

The first real casualty of this test was Speed Dial 2. While it works for Edge, Chrome, and Firefox, it doesn’t support Safari. Fortunately, Safari’s built in Favorites screen does pretty much the same thing. So I copied over links to all my most-used web apps and marked them as favorites in Safari.
Also: Chrome power tools: Two extensions organize your browsing 
Tabs initially proved disconcerting in Safari. There were no favicons to separate and make the tabs easily identifiable. Fortunately, this feature was added in Safari for Mojave, so all it took was a visit to Safari Preferences- >Tabs and clicking Show website options in tabs. Whew!

Ugh. Favorites sync between machines, but toolbar buttons, preferences, and extensions do not. I have to do the same setup process on Every. Single. Machine. Individually. Why?
It’s later in the day now, and I’ve survived my first few hours in Safari without mishap. Today, I’ve mostly been using Gmail and YouTube. My only complaint is that the X that closes tabs is very difficult to see, with very low contrast, both in dark and light mode. It’s much better in Chrome.

I just ran into a disappointing complication: there’s a favorites bar, but no bookmarks bar. In Chrome I use the bookmarks bar for dropdown menus of all my actively used sites. I use the new tab page for quick-launches to my most used web applications. 

But in Safari, you can only have a favorites bar. This does work the same as the Bookmarks bar in Chrome, even to the point of folders turning into drop-down menus. But, if you use favorites to create a quick-launch page for new tabs in Safari to compensate for the lack of new tab extensions, having a bunch of folders makes the new tab launcher much messier. 
On the other hand, I was able to easily use Safari to access the WordPress dashboard and support my open source users. It worked fine with my custom web search settings in Alfred. And my Shortcut Bar app, which I use for quick access to test sites, worked just fine, as did TextExpander.
Monday
My morning reading worked out fine in Safari. I did find a few annoyances because some of the Chrome extensions I rely on don’t have equivalents on Safari.
Context Menu Search doesn’t exist in Safari. This is an add-on I use multiple times a day to select a phrase, right click, and have it search Wikipedia or Amazon or YouTube or eBay or another of about 50 sites. I was reading a news article, and reflexively right-clicked on the name of someone I wanted to check out on Wikipedia, and the option wasn’t there.
Sure, I can easily just search Google and drill on down, but it adds to the clicks and time spent, reducing flow and productivity.
I also find myself missing the StyleBot and Send from Gmail extensions. All the various website customizations and annoyances I removed in Chrome are back again in Safari, but there’s nothing like StyleBot in Safari.
I regularly send articles I’m reading to associates. The lack of the Send from Gmail extension is adding more clicks. It’s a minor productivity loss.
It turns out that if you right-click on the new tab page background, you can turn toggle favorites, most-visited sites, and Siri suggestions. I like a very predictable and personally-configured launch page, so I turned off the most-visited sites and Siri suggestions.
And, of course, I had to make that change on each machine since iCloud didn’t sync those settings.
I totally miss the Copy Link Name extension, which copies the link text instead of the link itself. I use that constantly in my daily work. While there’s a Copy Link option on the right-click menu, and a Copy option on the Edit menu, neither will just copy plain text.
Gmail seems ever-so-slightly more responsive in Safari. I haven’t noticed any other big speed or performance gains from the switch.
Tuesday
Getting more used to Safari. Having more of my setup in place made it possible for me to just get started this morning without too much pain.
I did notice that there’s no Close Tabs to the Right option. You can Close Other Tabs, but it’s another minor productivity feature I find lacking. Ah, actually, there’s a Close Tabs to Right in Catalina, but not the earlier Mojave. I’m running both OSs on my different machines.

I really miss Reopen Closed Tab. In Safari, if you close a tab, you can undo it. But if you wait a while or do other actions, you can’t get your older tab back as easily. I wound up resorting to History to get back closed tabs.
Today I ran into a real productivity gotcha. Our corporate CMS is not running properly in Safari.
Some of you might say it’s not fair to count a custom corporate app, since nobody outside the company is going to use it. But while my experience is unlikely to be shared by anyone not using ZDNet’s CMS, if there’s a compatibility issue for one application, there may well be issues for others.
So here’s what’s happening. Every time I make an edit in an article, the scroll position changes, bouncing up and down the page. I constantly lose my place and have to find it again. I’ve used this CMS every day for the past decade, so I’m pretty used to its behavior, and it’s never done this in Chrome. Just to be sure this wasn’t a bug introduced in the CMS in the last few days, I did open Chrome to test. Nope. Only in Safari.
Again, it’s not a deal killer, but it’s very annoying. My most recent edit took me more than twice as long in Safari than it normally does in Chrome. For a daily activity, that’s a concern. 
Wednesday
Today’s big win is that PHP debugging with PhpStorm works flawlessly in Safari. I can’t say that I’m surprised, given how many coders prefer using Macs — and all of them can’t be using Chrome.

Okay, I can see it. The Safari development console is a definite win. I’m not going to go into the gory details because it would extend this article far too much, but suffice it to say that Safari has a rich selection of web development resources, a complete Developer menu, and some timeline diagnostic tools that are very helpful.
In fact, I can definitely see opening up Safari just to work with it when doing JavaScript and DOM development and debugging. Very nice tool.
Thursday
Not much new to report except for the previously-mentioned insufferable page bouncing that occurs in Safari while trying to post articles in the company CMS. I actually launched Chrome to post my articles because I just don’t hate myself enough to force myself to use Safari for that process. 
Interestingly, the page bouncing behavior seen in the CMS occurs on two separate Macs, and in both Mojave and Catalina.
To be fair, so far it’s really the only unusable aspect I’ve found in Safari. Other behaviors and feature lacks are a bit annoying, but nothing else has proven to be unusable.
Friday
I’ve used Safari’s Reader Mode on and off throughout the years when faced with a page that either wouldn’t print right or was so full of junk it was unreadable. But if you’re a Pocket user, you don’t really ever need to use Reader Mode because Pocket does a great job of cleaning up articles and presenting them for offline reading.
Chrome does have some Reader Mode extensions. There’s even a partially complete Reader Mode option you can turn on, but I do have to admit that Safari’s implementation is the superior version.
Other than that, Friday has proven to be uneventful. I’m looking forward to ending my week tomorrow and coming to some final conclusions that I can share with you.
Saturday
After a week, I’ve developed some level of muscle memory with Safari. I’m used to the tab close button being on the left of the tab instead of the right. I’m used to hitting undo to reopen a closed tab. And I’m generally used to the behavior of the browser.
That said, it’s clear that I’m somewhat enthusiastically anticipating my return to Chrome. Safari has been tolerable, but that’s about the best I can say about it.
My week of Safari experimentation is ending not with a bang, but with a “meh.”
My conclusions
My fundamental conclusion is that extensions make the browser. I find Chrome a bit sluggish and annoying from time-to-time, but the rich selection of extensions provides a profound benefit to my productivity.
I expected to conclude that Safari is much faster than Chrome, but that was not the case. Additionally, the lack of extension availability made my Safari experience tedious.
WIth the exception of our homegrown CMS, I found Safari able to handle any website or application I threw at it. It worked fine with my development system. So, from a compatibility point of view, I have no complaints.
But the dearth of extensions was challenging. In my daily diary, I mentioned some extensions whose functionality I couldn’t duplicate, but that barely scratches the surface of extension capabilities I missed. 
In Chrome, I’m running 57 extensions with features ranging from sending webpages via text messaging to optimizing my YouTube posting and SEO. Without that entire stable of extensions, some tasks were still doable, but at the cost of time. Other tasks were simply not doable at all, or required adding a whole bunch of steps and jumping between programs. Still other tasks — especially those that customized behavior based on the contents of a webpage’s document object model, were completely unavailable.
It’s possible that when Safari implements the WebExtensions API in Big Sur that the selection of extensions will expand. But unless Safari grows the kind of extension library that Chrome has, it will be a poor substitute.
Now that my week of Safari is up, I’m returning back to Chrome. And I’m doing it breathing a sigh of relief. It’s good to be back home again.
What about you? Are you running Safari or Chrome as your main daily driver? Have you tried the Chromium version of Edge? Do you think Big Sur’s WebExtensions API will make the difference? Let us know in the comments below. 
You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV. More

Investment in 5G infrastructure is expected to make up 21.3% of the wireless infrastructure market by the end of 2020. 

The coronavirus pandemic has caused disruption down the IT supply chain, causing supply shortages, transport issues, office closures, and in some cases, either staff redundancies and restructuring or the liquidation of companies.
See also: IBM, Verizon partner to develop 5G enabled IoT technologies for industrial sector
The disruption caused by COVID-19 has resulted in the revision of anticipated global IT market value this year from $3.8 trillion to $3.5 trillion, with devices and data center growth hardest hit. 
Investment in 5G infrastructure, however, is still going strong. 

As consumer demand for high-speed broadband and mobile connectivity grows, Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and other vendors in the networking equipment space have carried on with projects, many of which launched last year, to upgrade their networks in order to support the next-generation technology. 
CNET: Apple’s new security program gives special iPhone hardware, with restrictions attached
On Tuesday, Gartner released new estimates for estimated investment in this space, which will reach 21.3% of the wireless infrastructure market this year, an increase from 10.4% in 2019. 
However, the research agency also expects an overall decline in wireless revenue of 4.4% to $38.1 billion. 

China will pick up the lion’s share of 5G investment — potentially due to Huawei’s early investment in the communications technology — accounting for 49.4% of all worldwide investment in 2020. 
However, by 2023, Gartner expects 15% of all vendors to operate standalone 5G networks that do not borrow from existing 4G infrastructure, and coverage is expected across 95% of populations in the Asia/Pacific region, US, and Japan in the same year. 
TechRepublic: The challenges and opportunities of shadow IT
Gartner added that 5G investment will outstrip LTE/4G in 2022 as more vendors move away from legacy architecture and adopt 5G setups. 
“Investment in wireless infrastructure continues to gain momentum, as a growing number of CSPs are prioritizing 5G projects by reusing current assets including radio spectrum bandwidths, base stations, core network and transport network, and transitioning LTE/4G spend to maintenance mode,” said Kosei Takiishi, senior research director at Gartner. “In addition, governments and regulators are fostering mobile network development and betting that it will be a catalyst and multiplier for widespread economic growth across many industries.”
Previous and related coverage
Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

Google on Tuesday announced its fourth private subsea cable, connecting the US, the UK and Spain. Named for the computer science pioneer Grace Hopper, the new subsea cable will be the world’s first to incorporate novel optical fiber switching that allows for increased reliability in global communications. 
The new cable will be Google’s first investment in a subsea cable route directly to Spain. Last month, Google announced it will be opening up a new Google Cloud region in Madrid and partnering with the telecommunications giant Telefonica to advance 5G mobile edge computing. 
The Grace Hopper cable will also be one of the first new cables to connect the US to the UK since 2003, adding capacity across the busy route. 
Google already has three other private subsea cables: The Curie cable connects the US to Chile and Panama, the Dunant connects the US and France, and the Equiano connects Portugal to Nigeria and South Africa. Private cables help Google maintain better resiliency and security for its services while allowing the tech giant to plan for future capacity needs. 
The Grace Hopper cable will include 16 fiber pairs (32 fibers). Google signed a contract earlier this year to build the cable with Eatontown, NJ-based subsea cable provider, SubCom, and the project is expected to be completed in 2022. More

F5 Networks on Monday delivered better-than-expected third quarter financial results. The company reported non-GAAP net income of $134 million, or $2.18 per diluted share, on revenue of $586 million.

Wall Street was looking for earnings of $2.03 per share on revenue of $572.4 million.
F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou noted in his prepared remarks that the company has continued to see an increase in demand for capacity as customers scale remote access capabilities for employees working from home. 
“Customers continue to look to F5 to enable their mission-critical application needs and increasingly, are deploying a combination of F5 solutions spanning our F5, NGINX and Shape multi-cloud application services portfolio,” said Locoh-Donou. “In a challenging COVID-19 environment, our deep incumbency and close alignment with customers’ investment priorities are proving distinct competitive advantages and driving resiliency in our business.”
For the current quarter, F5 has set a revenue goal of $595 million to $615 million with a non-GAAP earnings target of $2.30 to $2.42 per diluted share. Wall Street is expecting revenue of $598 million and EPS of $2.26.

F5 shares were up a little over 2% after hours. 

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Mobile network operators in the UK have been urged to help put an end to internet gaps on the country’s railways with new antenna technology that could improve mobile connectivity for thousands of passengers.
The UK government has offered £200,000 in funding to operators who can develop a new prototype antenna that can be attached to existing infrastructure on Britain’s railways.

It is hoped that new equipment housing small cells and wireless antennas can be attached to electrified overhead line equipment (OLE) installed over roughly a third of Britain’s railways, similar to techniques successfully used in Austria to improve railway connectivity challenges.
Telecoms service providers have been called on to work with Network Rail to come up with innovative designs for trial phase of project.
Grant Shapps, the UK’s Transport Secretary, said the project could pave the way to a “railway of tomorrow” while putting an end to a problem that has blighted rail passengers’ journeys for years.

“It is just not good enough that passenger’s mobile connectivity experience is still poor, blighting our efforts to work, shop and communicate on everyday journeys,” said Shapps.
“By harnessing innovation and updating existing infrastructure, we can build the railway of tomorrow and find affordable solutions to improve travel for passengers. I urge telecom operators to match our ambition and we can commit to working closely together to design equipment and move forward in the next stage of this exciting trial.”
SEE: Guide to Becoming a Digital Transformation Champion (TechRepublic Premium)
The new programme coincides with new research commissioned by the UK government’s Department for Transport (DfT) and published by independent watchdog Transport Focus, which found that passenger’s experience of internet connectivity on trains fell well below their expectations.
Data gathered by researchers suggested that roughly 96% of the data traffic generated while passengers travelled on trains was carried over mobile network connections, while only around 4% was carried over the on-board Wi-Fi.
The average internet download throughput of on-train passengers’ connections was a measly 3.3Mbps for 3G and 4G compared to 1.4Mbps for Wi-Fi connections. In comparison, consumers generally achieve 6.8Mbps and 10.6Mbps respectively across the country.
Rather than investing in additional and expensive track-side masts, research funded by the Department for Transport found attaching antennas to existing infrastructure could effectively boost speeds while reducing costs.
Mobile operators are now being encouraged to develop technology for the next phase of the trial, which will test how antennas can be safely applied to a functioning railway. It is hoped a suitable prototype can be trialed by March 2021.
SEE: Crowdsourcing a better commute in the age of coronavirus
Charlene Wallace, Network Rail’s director of passenger and customer experience, said: “We are keen to work with government and train and telecom operators to deliver more consistent and reliable mobile coverage that improves passengers’ journeys in an efficient and affordable way.”
Other recent attempts to make UK railways more passenger-friendly include a £9.4m project launched by the DfT in mid-June aimed at bringing in such innovations as 5G Wi-Fi, hydrogen-powered freight trains, seat swapping apps and self-heating concrete slabs to prevent passengers from slipping on icy platforms.

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