Author Archives: Pauline

An interview with Kathleen Maiman

Twelve years after the 40th anniversary of the laser, we are celebrating its 50th. That’s only possible because the 40th anniversary was a Bell Labs’ invention based on the date of the now famous Physical Review paper describing the theory of “Infrared and optical masers”.
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Rewriting the history of the laser

Winston Churchill famously said that history is written by the victors. In the case of the laser it might be more accurate to say that history was written by those with the best public relations team.
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Benoît on the FTTH Benefit Compendium

Why fibre? It’s a fundamental question for proponents of fibre-to-the-home, but it’s difficult to answer concisely or even clearly because the answer varies dramatically depending on where you reside in the FTTH ecosystem.
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7 things I learned in Lisbon

Having just returned from the FTTH Conference in Lisbon, I thought I’d jot down my thoughts while they’re still fresh in my mind.
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Broadband Lite? No thanks!

Does the expanding use of social media provide a good reason to deliver better broadband networks? Yes, says Eric Qualman, author of Socialnomics, and keynote speaker at the FTTH Conference in Lisbon.
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NGA in the UK: the patchwork quilt

Although Britain was a leader in first-generation broadband, we're definitely late to the party when it comes to next-generation access (NGA). But the transition to fibre access networks has finally begun, and one image particularly brings this message home to me.
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Dutch broadband speeds don’t measure up

The Netherlands may be one of Europe’s leading broadband nations, but it’s suffering from a familiar problem – the actual broadband speeds received by consumers are significantly lower than advertised. A study carried out by Telecompaper in partnership with iPing shows that Dutch subscribers currently receive about 60 percent of the average advertised broadband [...]
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Public money and broadband in France

NEXTGEN09, LEEDS — What’s the best way for local authorities to encourage the roll out of next-generation broadband without distorting competition? The French experience, recounted by Gabrielle Gauthey, senior vice-president for public affairs at Alcatel-Lucent, seems to suggest that investing in backhaul is the right way to go.
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Backhaul bottlenecks

None of the consumer applications being discussed at Fibrecamp Britain today really require fibre, but in a perverse kind of way perhaps that’s a good thing. Today’s community networks are severely constrained by backhaul; until this problem is solved then innovative applications don’t stand a chance.
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Fibrecamp Britain: a reporter’s notes

It was standing room only at Fibrecamp this afternoon; a measure of the interest in providing high-speed broadband and next-generation access in the UK.
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