But just before kick-off, it was bright and sunny again as if relenting to Barcelon-ites’ fervent prayer for some Messi magic.That Catalunya in Spain considers itself a country on its China audio cable types factory own is evident in its people and their pride at being Catalans. Once inside, the delicate hues from innumerable stained glass niches give an almost halloed view of the tall columns, large reliefs and beautiful churches Take a walk into the crypt, see the exhibition of how the church was built from scratch and revel in Gaudi’s brilliance at work. An oft-repeated advice was to ask for a menu del dia for the best rates. There was the brilliant Passieg de Gracia, which houses the La Batillo and this hub of beautiful gourmet delight housed in the old Marketplace called El Nacional. While the discussions continue over many a delicious tapa, we explored this city that has risen time and again from a history filled with wrong choices when it comes to picking sides!

Landing in Barcelona through the Aero Bus in the Catalunya Square was the first sight of this glorious city, buzzing with tourism, excitement and openness. Walk about and enter the mind of Gaudi at his bright, bold and brazen best. We took a bus to the closest point to see the home of this artistic genius, who used to watch the progress of the Sagrada Familia in the distance from this quaint perch — a colonial home with beautiful orange tree-laden gardens, flowers, walkways, a wondrous park where Gaudí incorporated many motifs of Catalan nationalism, religious mysticism and ancient poetry. Then there were the happy Spanish people and their immense hospitality — oops! Catalan people I mean — wonderful, helpful and always ready with a flurry of names for where to try the best tapas and drinks. The Basilica arose from the inspiration of a bookseller, Josep Maria Bocabella.As a die-hard football fan, the trip went from awe to sensational with the visit to the Nou Camp for a match between Barcelona FC and Gijon, which Messi and his men took 6-0. The BnB Misca Scarda was a 45-minute walk from the square and it was wonderful, overlooking cobbled streets, a church tower in the distance and a nice Chinese breakfast café where you could have some sandwiches and drink vino like it was water.

There is a tour of the stadium and its museum too, which you can book online. We visited Park Guell — Gaudi’s home, located on a hillock called Carmel Hill, which overlooked the city. The maestro didn’t disappoint.We took a Sandman’s free-walking tour across the old quarter of Barcelona, with our very ‘propah’ Brit guide Ruby Wragg, and it was wonderful. Barcelona the beautiful had us completely bowled over and we will visit again, this city of many experiences, blue as the sky above. Quick pointer — get to know Barcelona before you go all touristy with a selfie-stick.The Sagrada Familia is something that you have to visit. Stock on some olives and chorizo with cheese and you can continue on this walk that leads you to the main square — the quaint Playa Barceloneta that was designed with a beach for the Olympics and to the Estatua de Colon. Walking through the old quarter to the oldest synagogue in the world sporting the flag with a star, which signifies their want for independence. Muchos besos!. The castle itself is pretty much a ruin, but the views, bicycle and walking trails are replete with an old world charm and are breathtaking. Its Gothic architecture is magnificent, even as the Spanish continue to complete it.

The Nou Camp stood tall, expansive and regal as it welcomed thousands into its lap and then went on to let the game do the talking. Stop at La Boqueria on La Rambla for a truly exquisite food sojourn filled with fried kalamari and tapas of all colours, shapes and sizes.To the right of Placa Catalunya is the walk down Barcelona’s famed La Rambla, which is teeming with people, though I personally thought it was overrated.The Barceloneta and the Gloria market are a must-do. He went on to score and so did Suarez. As you trudge those cobbled streets, gaze at churches, towers, silent statues and monuments, this impressionist painter’s delight fills you with awe. This 1882 building is still a work in progress, and its bold stature and statues take you aback with their detailing. As for your poison for the evening — if it’s bad wine, do it the Spanish way — drink it with Coca Cola and call it Kalimucho, (a useful tip, courtesy, a fellow Spaniard Lorena Sanchez).

Their quaint balconies stand testimony to this, sporting the ubiquitous yellow and red Catalan flags made even more apparent by guides who never fail to reiterate the uniqueness of this country. It was stupendous, after of course, the sky opened and poured its wrath just as thousands walked in sporting their Barcelona allegiance. It’s a place to hangout in perfect company, food and wine. From here, you can visit Castell de Montjuic, and take the cable car to the top, which on a sunny day will give you the best view, lapped by its azure waters. To the right is the fashion quarter with small cafes and street hawkers dotting the path

This enhances network life by 10-12 years as it provides cushioning against poor installation practices, saving repeat fibre investments.Smarter, programmable networks will ruleProgrammable networks will continue to grow as technologies such as SDN, NFV, disaggregation techniques and cloud-based approaches reach market maturity.Algorithmic network design Algorithmic design is the next big thing in network design and is an innovation which will enable a number of advantages, including automation in network design, increased design agility – which will reduce the time spent churning out reference designs, iterations and final designs – and automated outputs of geospatial design, engineering design and bills of quantities. We will see a proliferation of sensors and analytics for real-time monitoring of applications.

Sufficing bandwidth hungry applications and user speed throughput demands, international standards are now recommending minimum Cat6A for upcoming infrastructures. Additionally, telcos will increase their use of analytics in 2019, with on-demand analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and edge computing all playing a key role. It is another phase in the continuous pendulum swing between centralised computing and distributed computing and is a trend that has already been recognised by analysts.Superior transmission systemsAnother promising concept will be Super PON. This is seeing a shift towards CAT6A, CAT7A cables and above categories, for all new enterprise cabling network installations. Industry will have to take up efforts to overcome 1024 split Vs the current 64/128 limit to address this. PoE is a growing Ethernet application that delivers power and data over structured cabling. It can be easily integrated with other traditional surveillance technologies such as LIDAR, RADAR, IR Cameras, and UAVs for fibre buried in the ground.Less worries about connectivity infraAs operators look at faster customer acquisition with cost effective and future-proofed networks, they will rapidly adopt standardisation in deployment practices with approaches such as Lead360.Dr Badri Gomatam, Group CTO, Sterlite Tech, dons an oracle hat to share his top ten predictions for data networks.

Fibre evolution With these deployments relying on shared fibre infrastructures, we will see increased demand for physical infrastructure security, and innovations on sensory fibre and cable design. Additionally, CSPs are accelerating towards Cloud-native IT, leveraging open source architecture to deliver applications at a faster pace. We will also see a rise in ‘Backhaul as a Service’ deployments where third parties become neutral fibre/wireless backhaul hybrid network hosts and lead bandwidth on demand for 4G and 5G, providing better ROCE.3bt and the amount of power available for devices increasing nearly threefold to 90W, 2019 will see Ethernet enable many new applications. One such solution is bend insensitive fibre technology, which delivers minimal bend loss and China audio cable types Manufacturers features up to 10-15 times less macro-bend losses when compared to traditional solutions.5G and fiberisation: It’s closer than you think!As ultra-fast and low latency 5G mobile broadband inches closer, we will see deep fiberisation of small cells and tower infrastructures. Emerging applications will continue to demand higher bandwidth and these bandwidth intensive applications will require higher speeds in cabling infrastructures.

These were just few applications that drove the design and build out of smarter data networks. Given the scale of this fiberisation, operators will need cost effective and first-time right installation. LEO satellite constellations for rural broadband connectivity such as OneWeb and broadband offload through fixed wireless and advanced Wi-Fi 6 in urban areas are also on the cards. In September 2018, the IEEE announced IEEE 802.Power over Ethernet Power over Ethernet (PoE) will be a major business driver for data LAN cabling and other new applications such as IoT. This agile development with continuous integration and continuous development, along with micro services, will enable CSPs to deploy applications in lesser time and provide efficient scaling with respect to telco-domain requirements. Also expect to see enterprise and in-building (IB) LTE footprint focused on small cells/femto technology for enhanced in-building user experience, especially in India where it is currently not providing great user experience. Significant innovation on cable design is expected owing to the increased power delivery need, among which larger copper gauge, with preferred Category 6A, smaller bundle sizes to help reduce temperature rise and new cable construction methods are the major ones. The advanced signal processing algorithms based on the spectral and temporal characteristics are utilised to identify event patterns and to equalise background noise, soil conditions and ultimately classify potential threats from non-threats employing machine learning techniques.

With extended reach up to 50km (from 20km) that support large split ratio up to 1024 (from 64) based on DWDM, and its ability to support 10Gbit/s, 40Gbit/s or 100Gbit/s point-to-point business connections on the same pair of fibres, along with residential subscriber at high-speed up to 10Gbit/s, makes it an important technology development. With the new standard 802. This makes it suitable as the backbone for an adaptive perimeter intrusion detection system for border security missions, structural health monitoring systems, pipelines, smart power grid infrastructures, smart cities and more. As enterprise business requirements continue to change, infrastructure and connectivity solutions requirement will also shift. Consequently, computing is being done closer to the edge. CSPs are building distributed applications and bridging the gap between data, insight, and action, and will engage customers more quickly and squeeze new efficiencies out of their processes.2018 was the year of voice assistants, video streaming and consumer IOT in its home automation avatars.3bt, the next-generation PoE standard to deliver power more efficiently using all four pairs in a cable. Come 2019, as we get closer to 5G and all the hyper-data applications it will support, networks will continue to become smarter – open, software-defined and programmable. This will go hand-in-hand with DevOps.Multi-access networks: Transforming user experiences Operators will use a mix of access technologies 

For example, fixed wireless access to premise is likely to emerge as a leading use case for 5G as operators leverage large swathes of mmWave spectra to offer multi-Mbps offering to customers. Next-gen data centres These infrastructures are designed in such a way that the underlying hardware and software layers can respond dynamically to changing levels of demand in more fundamental and efficient ways. While 1G/10G broadband access is available now in several countries, 10G will remain expensive in 2019. AI, in particular, is evolving from assisting and automating functions to being used in application development with enhanced business domain expertise, from general development to business solution design.Taking computing to the edge The permeation of connectivity in our homes will be echoed in the business and industrial spheres as companies from all sectors look to digitally transform their operations and offerings.. Telcos will adopt AI and Machine Learning (ML) with coherent analytics for network and service automation, security and fraud management, customer care at scale. Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), for example, is a highly attractive passive fibre-optic sensing technology, being long range, highly sensitivity, cost-effective, rugged, and long-life