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The Smart Home for 80% of the Population
The smart home business model is too expensive for up to 80% of the population according to Kevin Meagher. Speaking at CONNECTIONS™ 16, Meahger, SVP Business Development of ROC-Connect, believes the way to get to the larger market is to create a free baseline service that opens up the market for add-ons. He indicates that this is…
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Smarter Telecom Workers Through Augmented Reality #AWE2016
At least one telecom operator is using Augmented Reality as a tool to help its technicians be more productive. APX Director of Sales, Sean Wood, describes how the Dutch-based communications provider, KPN, is able to deliver information to smart glasses that allow a technician to see things like work-orders, product information and customers’ data with just…
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Gigabit to Businesses Big and Small
Melanie Murphy of AT&T talks about their relatively rapid rollout of a gigabit fiber network into Cupertino, the hometown of Apple. This Silicon Valley burg has a variety of businesses and Murphy talks about how the city of Cupertino realized the needs of the businesses and was instrumental in a relatively rapid rollout of gigabit…
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Fiber as a Fundamental Ingredient of the Modern World
The question that entities with older fiber have to ask, is will it support the higher bit rates that are increasingly demanded? Speaking at the SmartGig Bay Area conference, the Fiber Optic Association’s president, Jim Hayes, made a strong argument for testing and characterizing fiber cable to understand its performance at higher bit rates. As…
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Voice Enabling the Connected Home
Voice as a key enabler of smart home success was a common theme of CONNECTIONS™ 16. Brett Sappington, Senior Director of Research for Parks Associates, cites presentations from companies, such as Amazon and Rovi, that focused on how the voice-machine interface is becoming an important way of communicating with smart home devices. He points out that…
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Is VR at Peak Expectations?
“2017 is going to be the year where VR and AR is really expected to start show some sales and some real meaningful value to businesses and customers,” said Eric Mizufuka of Epson America, Inc. Speaking at Augmented World Expo 2016, Mizufuka emphasizes his concern that the AR/VR market may be at peak expectations and that, in 2017,…
