In 2017 many companies have been humiliated by ransomware attacks. Various global attacks have cost these firms large amounts of money, with FedEx being hit for $300 million and Reckitt Benckiser $100 million. That cost is a stark reminder of how important it is to ensure the security of mission-critical data – and, perhaps unexpectedly, has deep consequences for the fibre-optic communication industry. It’s one factor raising the value of installed fibre, influencing the fortunes of companies buying up older links and driving the deployment of new ones, especially in metropolitan areas.

In December, as reported in Fibre Systems, a study predicted that there will be a 560 per cent increase in data traffic on metro cable networks, driven by an increased demand for video and the continued proliferation of data centres.
The Bell Labs study for Alcatel-Lucent showed that, by 2017, more than 75 per cent of that traffic will stay in metro networks – compared to 57 per cent today. It also indicated that traffic from video services will increase by as much as 720 per cent and data centre traffic will increase more than 440 per cent during the same time period.