Miniflex designs and manufactures optical fibre installation systems and products for the growing market in FTTP. Cost and convenience are the two biggest advantages of going wireless over wired. Signalling System #7 is being drowned out by the market-hyped promises of next generation networks. But, says Todd Mersch, it remains the heartbeat of the today’s revenue generating telecommunications networks. Two major semiconductor suppliers are taking very different routes to providing portable video encoding and decoding. Nick Flaherty reports. Researchers, industrialists, entrepreneurs, chip makers, software and content providers and operators from across Europe came together in Bristol, UK, to look at the next generation of wireless technology. Nick Flaherty reports. The move to high speed cellular systems, all IP networks and the next generation architectures is putting strain on the equipment developers, especially for the radio stages of the network.  With the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) market expected to experience a strong expansion through the remainder of the decade, this segment has become a key growth driver for telecom equipment suppliers A new generation of mobile phone equipment is being developed that could see a cellular basestation in every household. Technologies for high speed data to mobile phones and personal digital assistants are now emerging, with new companies competing with established players to provide the silicon. The market for mobile telephones for person-to-person communication has grown rapidly across much of Europe, North America and the rest of the industrialised world. Mobile phones, however, are becoming increasingly commodified -- the next major growth area in wireless communication will be in the area of qqqMachine-to-Machine, or Man-to-Machine (M2M) communication. There is a rich and long-standing debate in the literature over the advantages and disadvantages of asynchronous logic. Asynchronous merely means not synchronous, and there are many different types of asynchronous (or clockless) design styles. One advantage of running training courses from within a university is that they can reflect developments in key research areas. qqqThe University of Surrey, based in Guildford, Surrey, UK, has developed more than 30 courses that address developments in industry and up to date research. Broadband video applications are quite demanding, requiring high data rates, quality of service (QoS) features, and other capabilities that strain today's digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies. GarretCom has launched a small small footprint 6K16 16-port managed ethernet switch which offers configurable 10Mb - 1Gb support for the telecoms industry. The Vlinx Serial Server from B&B Electronics now makes it possible to Ethernet-enable serial devices and communicate anywhere in the world. Every unused serial port represents an opportunity to capture unused data and put it to work. Furthermore, manufacturers can extend communication and diagnostic data to older equipment without ripping out existing wires or otherwise affecting its operation. next