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Aiming to become the world’s largest cable company, Liberty Global has made several acquisitions in the recent years. These acquisitions include the UK’s Virgin Media, Dutch cable operator Ziggo NV, Ireland’s TV3, the cable channel ITV and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Liberty Global operates in 14 countries, serving 27 million customers who subscribe to more than 56 million television services, broadband Internet and telephone communication services. Liberty Global retains a mobile subscriber base of five million customers and offers Wi-Fi across more than five million access points.

In May 2016, the company acquired Cable & Wireless Communications PLC (CWC), a move that has allowed Liberty to expand its activities in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the wake of the acquisition, C&W Networks has expanded its portfolio by adding new terrestrial and subsea telecommunications networks. These changes have helped the company emerge as a telecommunications provider with more than 10 million video, broadband and fixed mobile telecommunication subscribers.

By joining with Liberty, C&W Networks has established itself as a leader in the territories in which it operates. C&W Networks has expanded its capabilities, special services and strengthening its broadband, IP, Ethernet and MPLS solutions. C&W Networks—with a network that stretches across 42 countries in the Pan-Caribbean, Andean, Mexico, Central American and North American regions—will receive greater resources and support to  better meet the needs of its customers.

C&W’s network contains more than 48,000 km of subsea fiber and almost 38,000 km of terrestrial fiber and coaxial terrestrial network. The network provides route diversity in the United States with multiple cable landings in Florida and New York. In addition, it offers the following: capacity on demand; dedicated broadband IP access through a carrier class IP overlay network; carrier Ethernet and carrier MPLS; a fully meshed MPLS network; redundant connectivity for greater security and protection; end-to-end solutions with a single point of contact; easy, simple, and direct customer fulfillment; increased network routing options; a carrier class network operations center (NOC), with around-the-clock, multi-language support; and a primary and secondary backup NOC .

C&W Networks has the capacity to meet the entire region’s broadband access goals by providing greater reliability and scalability. The markets in which it operates have experienced a revolution owing recognition to the high-capacity technology solutions that the company provides. Thanks to the acquisition of Liberty Global, C&W Network’s services will be further enhanced to better serve the customers.

Businesses and companies of all shapes and sizes must invest in research and development in order to improve the organization’s value-adding processes. Information technology (IT) encompasses all of the useful tools and applications that benefit both business operations and management. But how do we go about persuading small and midsize businesses (SMBs) of its importance and selling them IT infrastructure?

Given market dynamics, companies need to implement changes on the fly, and technology provides a means to achieve that goal. Businesses need to get new products to market quickly while still providing the quality that customers demand. In order to succeed, they also need to eliminate unnecessary products and take administrative steps to reduce production costs and timelines. The growth of global quality standards and business processes has also increased the need for companies to turn to technology to implement the changes needed to keep up with new requirements.

Different studies reveal that a very high percentage (more than 80 percent) of SMB executives in Latin America consider IT to be a significant driver of competitiveness. The SMB sector needs infrastructure that will allow it to compete in the knowledge economy and help it revamp its offerings and services.

Technology helps companies manage changes to their operations. Companies have reduced costs by reviewing business processes and eliminating those actions that customers do not perceive as valuable. The business impact of technology implementation is most visible in e-mail, online banking, tax payments, and purchasing, making it clear that the use of these technologies by organizations is constantly evolving together with the need for better and safer data management systems.

Mobility and the rise of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is another significant point to highlight, as the trend has grown considerably among companies. A recent study by the technology research firm Gartner estimates that by 2017, 50 percent of the world’s companies will require employees to bring their own devices to work.

Organizations must look not only at present opportunities to benefit from technology but also anticipate future changes. Any company focused solely on benefits in the here and now may overlook opportunities to implement changes that could affect its future profits or survival. Organizations that relied on strategic five-year plans in the past now find that these plans must be reviewed every 12 to 18 months. Organizations must also determine the appropriate scope of changes and manage internal culture changes to successfully integrate new technology.

The aforementioned points say a lot about the opportunities present in the SMB market; however, to successfully tap this market, we have to deploy the appropriate tools to be able to sell technology to these kinds of businesses.

Despite the existence of technologies suited to all applications or those that that can be customized to meet businesses’ needs, it is important to have a portfolio of products, solutions, and services tailor made for this market or to design something new based on each SMB’s needs. SMBs do not have the same demands as big corporations; however, by capturing them as clients, they could be equally or even more profitable.

Every Internet-connected device is assigned a unique number known as an Internet protocol (IP) address, which serves to establish its connection with the rest of the global network. This system currently works with two protocols: IPv4 and IPv6.

Developed in 1983, IPv4 — the most widely used protocol — is limited to four billion different addresses. Although this pool of addresses was initially thought to be sufficient, ultimately it turned out not to be. Along with the mobile device boom and the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) — the idea of connecting everyday objects both to the Internet and to each other — came a surge in the number of Internet-connected devices. In this context, a new protocol, IPv6, was proposed, capable of providing 340 undecillion different addresses.

The number of interconnected objects capable of sensing, monitoring and managing automated data is on the upswing. IoT is no longer just a potential market but has become instead an established trend in our society. Whether part of smart transportation, healthcare, homes, or cities, this technology promises billions in earnings worldwide, as a result of the investments that businesses and organizations are pouring into it. Market analysis firm IDC estimates that, by the end of 2020, there will be 50 billion connected objects, which translates into US$1.7 trillion worth of business. With billions of devices worldwide, all of them interconnected, IPv4 will become obsolete.

The truth is that IoT will be increasingly present in people’s daily lives. Government investment in smart infrastructure and solutions to streamline and improve citizens’ lives is growing globally, and Latin America is no exception. For their part, companies are increasing their business opportunities by embracing these technologies.

In this scenario, IPv6 is the only viable technology upon which to build IoT, since billions of devices will be connected to the Internet in the upcoming years. If, as mentioned above, IPv4 addresses are being exhausted, there is no choice but to implement IoT over IPv6.

Although some IoT technologies, such as RFID or ZigBee, do not use IPv6, the trend is to migrate from these technologies to IP. Today, only small-scale, self-contained projects can be implemented without IPv6.

Nonetheless, IPv6 protocol deployment in Latin America and the Caribbean has been sluggish. Experts assert that it has been delayed due to a lack of training on the part of technicians at most of the region’s organizations and Internet companies. The protocol created to replace IPv4 remains poorly understood and underrated, probably because there is still a failure to recognize its true value in terms of Internet development.

It is important to understand IPv6 as a key tool to achieving greater performance from Internet applications. To that end, LACNIC, the Internet address registry for Latin America and the Caribbean is developing different activities in the region to explain the depletion of IPv4 addresses. The steps that must be taken for IPv6 migration. Active participation by all stakeholders is required to achieve the smoothest possible transition, assuring continuous network growth through a proper, stable, and secure transition to IPv6 throughout the region.