The Economic Drivers of 5G

January 20, 2022

In our last blog post, Seán Adam, AFL’s VP of Market Strategy and Innovation, spoke of the potential of 5G and its requirement for available spectrum and a strong wireline communication infrastructure. But to understand what that “strong wireline communication infrastructure” is, we first need to ask, “What does that infrastructure need to provide?” To […]

Six Reasons to Choose Fiber Optic Cable Over Copper Cable

January 20, 2022

When installing a network, one of the first decisions that technicians need to make is if they will be using fiber optic cable or copper cable. Although both copper cable and fiber optic cable can transmit an acceptable signal, fiber optic cable is the most desired choice with today’s growing bandwidth requirements over large distances. […]

Black Swans and Fiber Networks

January 20, 2022

A black swan event is defined as “an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences.” The phrase originates from the story that for years, people assumed that there was no such thing as a black swan because nobody had recorded seeing one – until finally […]

Achieving a Connected World

January 20, 2022

Deployment of broadband infrastructure has reached a pivotal point. Networks are being built to last for generations and the level of connectivity is key to its success. During the 2021 BICSI Fall conference, Patrick McLaughlin, Chief Editor of Cabling Installation and Maintenance, interviewed Seán Adam, Vice President, Market Strategy and Innovation at AFL, on what […]

The Collision of Cloud and the Edge - Part 2

January 18, 2022

In my last blog entry, I talked about the “collision” of “Cloud” and “Edge” computing, the one trend pushing computing capability away from the user, toward more centralization and the other pushing it toward the user. I concluded by saying that it was unpredictable where and indeed whether this collision would occur, but that network […]

The Collision of Cloud and the Edge - Part 1

January 18, 2022

As 5G deployments continue toward the goal of ubiquitous coverage, two apparently conflicting trends are developing: C-RAN and Edge Computing. C-RAN, or Centralized/Cloud Radio Access Network, is an architecture in which active equipment—most notably the BBU, or BaseBand Unit—gets moved away from the network edge and centralized or moved to “the cloud.” Edge computing is […]