Technologies

Each year, new innovations and emerging technologies bring us closer to a fully connected society. In this context, telecommunications service providers face the challenge of differentiating themselves in a saturated market, managing a constant flow of new solutions and technologies that promise lucrative opportunities, but also the need to reduce costs in existing services. The challenge lies in finding the balance, strategically investing in innovative applications, technologies, and services that generate a real impact on the business.

Telefónica will discontinue its ORLA-T wholesale leased line service on April 30, 2026. The ORLA-T service is part of Telefónica's Leased Line Reference Offer. It consists of dedicated digital circuits using traditional technologies (PDH/SDH) that have been in service for decades, particularly in the business sector.

Multi-color optical switching is essential for potential advances in telecommunications and optical computing. However, most materials typically exhibit only monochromatic optical nonlinearity under intense laser illumination. To overcome this problem, researchers have shown that exciting the multi-valley semiconductor germanium with a monochromatic pulsed laser enables ultrafast switching of the transparency across multiple wavelengths. This advance could accelerate the development of ultrafast optical switches for future multiband communications and optical computing.

Hyundai Motor has partnered with Samsung to become the first in the mobility manufacturing industry to verify RedCap's P-5G technology. "Hyundai Motor was the first Korean company to implement P-5G in mass production," said Jae Min Lee, Vice President and Head of the E-FOREST Center of Hyundai Motor and Kia. "We are also the first in the industry to verify RedCap's P-5G technology, further strengthening our global leadership in smart manufacturing solutions."

A recent study titled “Gaming on the Edge: Performance Issues of Distributed Online Gaming,” presented at the IFIP International Conference on Networking 2024, proposes an innovative model to improve the online gaming experience, especially on mobile devices. Led by an international research team, including Professors Marco Ajmone and Vincenzo Mancuso from IMDEA Networks, the study explores how edge computing can transform Gaming as a Service (GaaS) by improving performance.

NTN NB-IoT technology enables satellites to provide telecommunications services to Internet of Things devices in areas without terrestrial base station coverage. Adnan Khan, Director of Marketing for Advanced Technology, explains how it works and the role testing plays in ensuring product compliance. 

Mexico is experiencing rapid growth in the construction and expansion of local data storage. According to the consulting firm Mordor Intelligence, the Mexican data center market is projected to reach 480.4 MW by 2029, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.07%. This growth reflects not only the maturity of the market but also the need to adopt advanced technologies that ensure operational continuity and energy efficiency.

Quantum computers can be built in many ways. You may be familiar with the competing approaches, each claiming to offer advantages in terms of quality, scalability, cost, and so on. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that new generations of optical and photonic technologies will be essential across all of them. This presents an exciting opportunity in the supply chain for many players, both established and new, in the photonics ecosystem. 

In 2025, the electronic security sector will focus on maximizing existing investments to enhance security, improve efficiency, and foster collaboration across teams. While enthusiasm for deploying emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) remains significant, sustainable investments in governance, risk management, and regulatory compliance will take priority.

SLAM technology has begun to be introduced into the construction industry to develop its potential in this sector, following in the footsteps of other industries such as robotics and autonomous systems, areas where it is already widely used. Traditionally, construction documentation involves the manual capture of hundreds of photos or videos to track project progress.

Huawei has launched a series of F5G Advanced (F5G-A) solutions and products for customers in Europe. Gavin Gu, President of Huawei's Enterprise Optical Business Domain, shared key industry trends: intelligent transformation is placing greater demands on data sensing and transmission, driving three major trends in the optical industry.

In recent years, there has been a trend in optical transceiver technology toward integrating the transceiver with the ASIC. Traditionally, pluggable optics—optical modules that are inserted into and removed from the front panel of a switch—have been located near the edge of the printed circuit board (PCB). These pluggable optics are widely used in data center networks to interconnect switches and servers. While they offer flexibility, scalability, and ease of upgrades, they face significant challenges, primarily high power consumption and limited bandwidth density.

The Draghi Report on the future of European competitiveness prioritizes the closure of legacy copper networks and the completion of the first step in Europe's digital transformation. Setting a specific date for the closure of legacy copper networks reflects the commitment of DG Connect.

Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology has come a long way since its inception. The technology began in the late 1990s when the U.S. National Security Agency and Department of Defense started looking for ways to transmit massive amounts of data securely and quickly. The goal was to create a system resistant to hacking, interference, and other security threats.

Metamaterials are innovative, man-made materials with unique properties rarely found in nature. Composed of composite materials such as metals and plastics arranged in precise, repeating patterns, metamaterials derive their extraordinary capabilities from their meticulously engineered structures rather than their base materials. By manipulating shape, geometry, size, orientation, and arrangement, metamaterials can control incoming waves—blocking, absorbing, enhancing, or bending them—in ways that conventional materials cannot.

Over the past decade, the capacity of Ethernet switches for data centers has increased from 0.64 Tbps to 25.6 Tbps, driven by the adoption of 64x400 Gbps or 32x800 Gbps pluggable optical transceiver modules. However, these high-speed modules, within their current form factors, present significant challenges. These include the required densities of electrical and optical connectors, as well as the increasing power consumption.

To achieve next-generation optical engines that support 800 Gbps and more per module, the communication speed must be doubled to at least 100 Gbps per lane.

CISPA researcher Adrian Dabrowski, along with colleagues from SBA Research and the University of Vienna, has discovered two significant security vulnerabilities in the mobile protocol Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi), also known as WLAN calling. These vulnerabilities compromise the security of communications for millions of mobile phone customers worldwide. Updates to address the issues have already been released.

Modern smartphones can establish phone connections not only via mobile networks but also over Wi-Fi, thus ensuring connectivity even in locations with poor mobile network quality, such as tunnels, basements, or while traveling on trains.

Antenna encapsulation methodologies have evolved to counteract the increasing signal attenuation in high-frequency communications, such as 5G mmWave and the planned 6G networks. Previously, antennas were placed on printed circuit boards; now, there is a shift towards integrating antennas directly into the same package as the radio frequency chip.

Future connected vehicles will offer drivers a safer, smoother, and more comfortable driving experience. Drivers will not only have access to more navigation and entertainment options, but also to safety technologies that could potentially reduce accidents, improve traffic flow, and lower emissions worldwide by enabling vehicle safety systems to communicate with each other and with city traffic infrastructure.

The Bundesnetzagentur has published a provisional report from the unit responsible for overseeing duplicate fiber infrastructure projects, which the Bundesnetzagentur and the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV) created in July 2023.

Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur: “The interim report is the first comprehensive review of real-world cases of infrastructure duplication. It reveals two things in particular. First, duplicate infrastructure projects generally exist across the market and in various competitive landscapes.”