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UK telecoms provider BT is to invest £1.5 billion ($3 billion) to roll out superfast broadband to up to 10 million UK homes by 2012. The system will enable services such as video conferencing, video on demand, and other high bandwidth activities. The programme is Britain's largest ever investment in superfast broadband, which will deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. The fibre will be linked to a cabinet in the street and in some cases - such as the Olympic village for the 2012 Games - directly to the premises. Homes linked to a fibre-to-the-cabinet network will receive initial speeds of up to 40 Mbps, due to the copper cable that connects the house to the cabinet. However, BT expects this to increase to 60 Mbps with new technologies. Those on a fibre-to-the-premises network will see speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

"General Cable's STABILOY® and NUAL® Brand aluminum alloy building wire offering consists of the following: STABILOY® Brand of Service Entrance Cables (SER/SEU) and non-residential cables including Metal Clad (MC), FeederPlex HS® (High Speed) XHHW-2, and WIDESTRIPE HS® (High Speed) XHHW-2 for the U.S. market. The NUAL® Brand of aluminum alloy building wire offers similar cable constructions of AC90, FeederPlex HS® RW90, WIDESTRIPE® RW90, TECK 90 for the Canadian market. "

8Mb rADSL is a far off pipe-dream - only speed advantage over a modem is the connect time. But it's what I'm charged for.

Another factor in the local network copper/aluminium/fibre mix. Consumers are paying for high speed and getting something in between. This isn't underpinning demand its causing consumers frustration.

Companies would spend more than $6-billion on submarine and terrestrial fibre optic cable infrastructure projects in Africa over the next two years, as countries scramble to boost international connectivity, market analysis firm BMI-TechKnowledge (BMI-T) said on Wednesday. In its latest research report, entitled 'Outlook for submarine and terrestrial fibre-optic cable developments in Africa', BMI-T said that the effective high-speed internet services required for critical business, government and consumer applications have remained either unavailable or very expensive in Africa. Governments' awareness of this situation, and the perceived commercial attractiveness of the opportunity to close this gap, has given rise to the current frenetic activity for construction of submarine fibre cables on the continent. Investment in Africa's ICT infrastructure has improved significantly over the past decade. However, marked deficiencies persist in the backbone networks across the continent. "Although countries on the African west and southern coasts have access to fibre connectivity through the SAT-3 undersea cable, an estimated 80% of Africa's international voice and data traffic is carried via satellite," said Chanakira.

"But if nature was forced to use the pipes-and-ion-channels approach, that leaves us with plenty of scope for speeding things up using silicon and copper (and this is quite apart from all the other more exotic computing substrates that are now on the horizon). If we were simply to make a transition membrane depolarization waves to silicon and copper, and if this produced a 1,000x speedup (a conservative estimate, given the intrinsic difference between the two forms of signalling), this would be an explosion worthy of the name."

"This market insight provides an outlook of the growth opportunities for the rail industry in India. Ambitious government plans coupled with unprecedented levels of foreign investment are leading to a complete overhaul of the rail environment in India. Over 39 cities are planning to invest in expansive urban rail networks to address severe traffic congestion problems. High-speed rail and dedicated freight corridors are planned to separate passenger and freight traffic to increase operating efficiency."

Carrots are more appealing than sticks - and sometimes just as effective. That, at least, is the message that Europe's big telecoms operators have successfully delivered to European policy makers in Brussels. Late last week, Neelie Kroes, EU telecoms commissioner, backed down on her threat to make owners of old-style copper networks - the likes of France Telecom or Telefónica - lower the price at which they grant access to smaller rivals unless investment in high-speed fibre networks is stepped up. Instead, the Dutch politician, who estimates EU broadband investment needs at €270bn, promised regulatory "stability and consistency". True, she plans stricter rules to ensure equal access to networks. But for incumbent telcos, that is like being poked by a twig compared with the big baton of lower access charges.

"The traction transformer market in North America is driven by the increase in electrification of railways and high deployment of high speed trains in this region. Also the enhancement in the government spending in rail infrastructure is fostering the growth of the North America traction transformers market."

Hewlett-Packard said on Monday it plans to buy Colubris Networks, furthering the consolidation of wireless networking companies. Financial terms were not disclosed. HP said the deal should close by the end of fiscal 2008, which occurs in October. Colubris, founded in 2000 and based in Waltham, Massachusetts, sells wireless access infrastructure products based around the 802.11n wireless standard, which can match or best the speeds of a plugged-in broadband connection. But the upgrade to 802.11n poses many issues for it to work efficiently. Colubris has centered many of its products around the predicted upgrade of those networks over the next few years. Colubris also sells wireless security and network management products. HP said products from Colubris will be incorporated into its ProCurve Networking portfolio, which will improve HP's ability to serve the health-care, transportation, manufacturing and education markets, among others. In June, Belden said it would buy WLAN vendor Trapeze Networks for US$133 million

Johnson Controls, a global leader in building efficiency, announced the new LX Series of air conditioners and heat pumps by York, its leading air conditioning, heating, refrigeration, and ventilating company. They feature a MicroChannel coil with enhanced heat transfer characteristics, enabling them to achieve the desired performance levels with less coil surface area than competitive condensers and up to 50 percent less refrigerant. The units are available with environmentally friendly R-410A refrigerant as well as R-22. 14.5 SEER LX Series air conditioners use a compressor blanket and swept-wing fan blade for quieter operation. 15+ SEER can be achieved when the air conditioner is matched with a variable-speed air handler or gas furnace. A fully louvered steel coil guard, corner posts and a polymer mesh protect the condensing coils from damage. The unit's heavy-duty cabinet is made of powder-painted steel that resists corrosion and rust creep.\n\n\n\n\nIn addition, the MicroChannel coil offers better galvanic corrosion resistance than conventional coils. In testing, the coil withstood 7,000 hours of salt spray with a higher success rate than conventional coils at just 1,000 hours, making the units particularly desirable for seacoast applications, reveals the company's press release.\n\n