The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) officially approved the very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) standard. The new VDSL2 Recommendation (ITU-T G.993.2) delivers up to 100 Mbps both up and downstream, a ten-fold increase over "plain vanilla" ADSL. Yoichi Maeda, chairman of the ITU Telecommunications Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Study Group responsible for the work, said: "We have leveraged the strengths of ADSL, ADSL2+, and VDSL to achieve the very high performance levels you will see with VDSL2. This new standard is set to become an extremely important feature of the telecommunications landscape, and is a landmark achievement for our members, many of whom are relying on this Recommendation to take their businesses to the next level."
The global cloud computing market is undergoing new significant growth, driven by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and the demand for flexible, scalable infrastructure. The recent market study by International Data Corporation (IDC) provides compelling evidence of this transformation, highlighting the accelerating growth in cloud infrastructure spending and the pivotal role of AI in shaping the industry's future trajectory. Shared Infrastructure Market Development The study reveals a 36.9 percent year-over-year worldwide increase in spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments in the first quarter of 2024, reaching $33 billion. This growth substantially outpaced non-cloud infrastructure spending, which saw a modest 5.7 percent increase to $13.9 billion during the same period. The surge in cloud infrastructure spending was partially fueled by an 11.4 percent growth in unit demand, influenced by higher average selling prices, primari