Technical Editor Simon House looks at the latest tech news including Openreach rolling out their new FTTC offering Ultrafast broadband.
Let’s take a look at some of the latest tech news.
Openreach are currently rolling out their new FTTC offering called G.Fast which is being classed as “UltraFast” broadband
The rollout of FTTC broadband (Fibre to the Cabinet) has slowly reached many areas now and most businesses have been benefiting from the much higher download and upload speeds available.
This has enabled businesses to work more efficiently and has opened up many avenues such as proper remote working, VOIP, video conferencing and other higher bandwidth activities.
Up until recently, the maximum speed of a FTTC line has been 80mb downstream and 20mb upstream (actually the useable maximum is around 72mb down and 17mb up) – the speed which you receive depends on the distance you are from your local green fibre cabinet – the speeds start to reduce when you are approximately 400 metres away. FTTC works by utilising different frequencies on the piece of cable to delivery your internet connection.
Currently the “up-to” 80mb FTTC service uses up to 17.664 Mhz frequency.
Openreach are currently rolling out their new FTTC offering called G.Fast which is being classed as “UltraFast” broadband speeds and can reach “up-to” 330mb down and 30mb up. This is made possible by harnessing higher frequencies on the current copper cable infrastructure.
Both of the 80mb and 330mb services keep their spectrum separate in order to avoid interference with each other.
To deploy this Openreach are installing “pods” which connect to existing green street cabinets.
It is hoped that by 2020 ultrafast speeds of more than 100mb will be available to more than 12 million properties.
Microsoft announce Windows 10 “Sets”
Microsoft have recently announced a new feature which at the moment they are calling “Sets” – it is the result of an internal “Tabbed Shell” project that they have been working on.
“Sets” gives users the ability to group together related apps and websites under one window.
For example, a user can have Word, Excel, Outlook and their browser all appear as tabs in one single window, allowing for switching easily between each site or app.
This will be useful when working on a project that involves the use of multiple windows and apps – it means they can all be stored and run in one single window all in a tab of their own to make it easier to manage and not confuse apps with other projects you are working on.
When paired with the new “Timeline” feature that is currently in testing this allows the user to resume these “Sets” across devices very easily.
When working on a project, you may have a “Set” open with some tabs from Word, Excel and some internet browsing tabs all open and linked to this project, when you save the document it also saves the project so that when it is opened again on this device or a different device it then re-opens all the tabs or just some of them.
“Sets” will not be ready for the Spring update, but perhaps next October.
Quote from Microsoft:
“The concept behind this experience is to make sure that everything related to your task: relevant web pages, research documents, necessary files, and applications, is connected and available to you in one click.
Office, Windows, and Edge become more integrated to create a seamless experience, so you can get back to what’s important and be productive, recapturing that moment, saving time – we believe that’s the true value of Sets. And with Timeline, it’ll be even easier to go back and find the Set you were working on.”