Contents

	Welcome Note
	First Comes The Last Mile
	Reliability! Manageability! Space Saving!
	Innovative Cable Management
	ADC acquires LGC Wireless
	ADC KRONE At A Glance
	Get a Grip

First Comes The Last Mile

Very often, some things in life are taken for granted. Any of these sights could remind us of our neighborhood, in some parts of developing countries, within the Asian subcontinent.

On a lighter note, these pictures exhibit convergence of a different kind. From poles that serve to tie political banners and festoons, to cabinets that help the local milkman to strap his cow – they also serve as termination points for communication. It is remarkable that even under such adverse conditions, the plain old telephone still works.

As telecommunication infrastructure penetrates into the length and breadth of our countries and through the streets and alleys of our crowded and congested cities, the access or what is traditionally referred to, as the last mile becomes a challenge.

The access often contains a whole band of passive and active elements. Nevertheless, planners tend to devote more attention to the active systems. Communication traffic can be likened to vehicular traffic. On a normal road, one would see vehicles ranging from speeding cars, to cycles and rickshaws inching forward, not to mention the pedestrians. All of them use the same infrastructure, which is the road. Communications too, ranging from high bandwidth DSL services, to bursty internet traffic, to POTS many times uses the same cabling infrastructure in the access.

As the demand for bandwidth at the subscriber premises increases, the reliability of the access assumes a higher importance. In a typical network, the external plant very often accounts for over 50% of the problems but in terms of cost contributes not more than 10-20% of the total Network cost. The choice of termination technologies, connectors, cables and above all best practices in installation plays a vital role in the reliability and therefore the quality of service.

Testing
ADC KRONE products and components pass through rigorous tests to maintain a high quality standard.

It is therefore little wonder that even under extreme and adverse environment conditions ADC KRONE connection systems continue to perform. However, good products badly installed, will still have virtually the same effect on service quality. It is therefore imperative that best practices are adhered to during installation, termination, cable routing and also for grounding techniques as well.

In a manner of speaking, data rates have increased from ounces per minute to gallons per minute. Like a straw is sufficient for sipping from a soda bottle, the wire pairs – thanks to technology – has enough capacity to support two-way communication traffic. With Internet becoming ubiquitous and high-performance data networks becoming a part of today’s corporate environment, they will starkly bring out the deficiencies in cable and connectivity solutions, which are not engineered with high quality. It is not only the silicon chips and processors in active systems that are critical,equally critical are the connectors and cables.

From this standpoint the last mile is actually the best hope for dramatically boosting the network performance and service quality. As competition emerges service providers will switch to building business models based on what they see from a user’s point of view. And from the user’s perspective access is no more the last mile but instead the first mile. Coming from over 75 years of experience, ADC KRONE’s connectivity products are also naturally the first choice globally!

Sumit Bhatia
Director
Carrier Networks
ADC KRONE