Information and communications technology industry update

With an estimated value of 638 billion euro in October 2004, the European information and communications technology (ICT) market is currently second only to the USA in worldwide market share, with the UK this year holding over 20 per cent of the European market. Forecast growth in Europe is 4.4 per cent to the end of 2005, with the UK share expected to be around 4.5 per cent of this market.

Key identifiable trends driving business growth forward are:

• the need to obtain significant returns on investment from ICT spending

• technology advances that encourage the use of fibre networks

• continued strength and reliability of copper cable for most business network applications

• investment in IT security technology

• wireless applications and increases in the deployment of 3G

• broadband and mobile services.

Consumer developments show the following trends:

• time spent online increased eight-fold between 1999 and mid-2004, to an average 16 hours a week

• time spent on mobile phone calls almost tripled over the same time, to 27 minutes a week

• total consumer spending on mobile services exceeded that on fixed-line phone calls

• 86 per cent of UK households contain at least one mobile phone

• 21 per cent of consumers now regard their mobile phone as their main phone

• broadband services are available to 89 per cent of households and take-up is growing rapidly

• there are almost 50,000 new broadband subscribers every week.

Good news for people in or choosing to join the ICT industry:

• company failure rates, unemployment rates and redundancies all fell

• employment levels rose

• a giant leap in advertised job opportunities with further demand predicted

• out of a total industry workforce of 943,000, 91 per cent are full-time employees

• average annual salary was £35,800 for permanent staff, and £57,300 for contract staff

• the basic full-time working week is 39 to 40 hours

• 57 per cent of people can expect to work an extra nine hours’ paid overtime a week.

Network engineering

2004 has been a defining year for telecommunications, with the drive towards speeds of 10 Gigabits per second (one-Gigabit networks have been well-established for over five years) over unscreened twisted pair copper cable. The installation of 10 Gigabit/second structured cabling provides a realistic bandwidth to-the-desk alternative to optical fibre, which is essential to major backbone requirements but has a high cost of transmission equipment.

The current Cat 6 ratified standard will support 10 Gigabit Ethernet but a new cabling standard, ‘Cat 6 Augmented’, is proposed that will supersede Cat 6, although there is a technical debate over whether it will be shielded or unshielded. While Cat 6 copper cable does have improved performance, Cat 5e is still adequate for most business needs. Meanwhile Cat 7 copper cable, operating at six times the bandwidth of Cat 5, is already under development.

Increasingly, Ethernet networks are playing an influential role in industrial applications where the installation, transmission and environmental factors require more rigorous component and installation standards to deal with harsher operating conditions involving plant or automatic machinery.

Convergence

Convergence denotes the coming together of voice, data, video and other applications on a single broadband delivery platform – networks based on the Internet. Converged networks already exist, with the promise of cost savings, greater productivity and easier management of the communications infrastructure. Investment in and refining the technologies will result in increased productivity, depending on training, management of deployment and use of converged networks.

Security systems

The total UK security systems industry is worth £2,760 million: divided into £810 million in intruder alarms; £1,040 million in CCTV; £540 million in access control; £250 million in integrated systems; and £120 million in central alarms. The main developments to counter 24-hour crime are mobile cameras and the use of infra-red lighting alongside dome cameras to provide images of the right quality for identification, recognition or as evidence in court.

Mobile communications

The mobile industry continues to thrive, with an insatiable demand for new and improved handsets and services such as picture and video transmission, downloading of music, ringtones and other Internet-enabled (WAP) services coupled with increased pricing competition between network service providers. May 2004 saw over 2 billion text messages (72 million a day) sent across the UK, 28 per cent up on the previous year.

Standards, qualifications and training

Four new fibre-optic cable standards have been introduced: Optical Multimode 1, 2, 3 and Optical Singlemode (OS1). They will affect planning and installing projects so newcomers need to ensure that their optical-fibre training covers this area. The City & Guilds 3466 qualification has been extensively revised and updated, and became the new City & Guilds 3666 Certificate in Communications Cabling in June 2004.