■Telecom, CATV
Ever since fiber optics was invented in the 1960s, it has increasingly become the medium of choice in communication networks. Optical fiber outperforms copper in bandwidth, transmission distance, noise immunity, and power consumption, making it superior to copper across a broad range of applications. In the past 30 years, fiber optics has replaced nearly all telecommunication copper links, whether in long distance switches, central offices or subscriber loop carriers, with connection to the home being the one exception until now. CATV companies have also followed in the telcos’ footsteps, using fiber optics across their networks in a bid for greater reliability and the opportunity to offer new bandwidth-intensive services (such as XoD and internet), but until now they have encountered a number of problems in the last mile deployment.
FTTH (MDU and Single family dwelling)
Although fiber optics has penetrated into most communications networks, why has it faced difficulty replacing copper in the last mile? Each home is unique in structure and layout, and is already congested with wired and wireless devices. Before the advent of bending insensitive fiber, installation of traditional thick and heavy optical cable inside the home presented numerous challenges. As a result, copper, coaxial and CAT5e/6 cables have been widely used in the field, regardless of their shortcomings in bandwidth, EMI sensitivity, distance limitations and high power consumption.
In order to be used effectively in the last mile, optical cable must be as easy to deploy as copper, or even easier. It must be bendable, packaged in a convenient-to-use cardboard paper carton, and must provide strong pulling force tolerance, and offer easy termination on-site. POFC BendSafe® boxed cable (Fiber-in-the-Box) meets all these requirements, and provides the preferred answer for a wide variety of market needs. BendSafe® boxed cable boasts high mechanical strength (fatigue value Nd>30), and is resilient to tight bending, sharp turning, strong pulling and crude handling situations during and after installation. It can also be spliced quickly and easily using mechanical splicing.
POFC’s boxed cable using its proprietary BendSafe® fiber can be used readily in any type of MDU (Multiple Dwelling Units) and single family dwelling. Another benefit of BendSafe® boxed cable lies in its ability to save space (cable diameter 3.0mm). This in turn meets the needs of future optical networks – offering smaller, denser and more efficient cabling deployment!
Products for FTTH
BendSafe® boxed cable: MMF 2C, 4C, 12C; 305m and 1000m.
BendSafe® boxed cable: SMF 2C, 4C, 12C; 305m and 1000m.
Optical Cabinet (Optical distribution box)
Optical Cabinet (Optical patchpanel)
LAN (Factory/Enterprise and Home Network)
Traditional LAN (Local Area Networks) systems require copper coaxial cable or twisted pairs to be run between or among two or more of the nodes in the network. Common systems operate at 100 Mbps and newer ones also support 1 Gbps or higher data rates. But transmission length is limited due to the transmission limitations of copper wire. Power consumption is also high. The maximum distance for CAT5/CAT6 installations is roughly 100 meters. In addition, LAN copper cable is delicate, offering only a 25-pound pulling tension limit, and sharp turns will ruin high-speed performance. Optical cable breaks these constraints and provides installers a better alternative for building out networks.
No matter whether in the industrial or enterprise environment, EMI from a variety of sources is a main cause of failure in copper cabling installations. To run copper cables, it is often necessary to tun the cable through expensive conduits to provide adequate shielding. Optical cables avoid EMI issues altogether. Fiber optics also offers significant savings in power consumption versus copper.
New and advanced technologies enable an increasing number of compelling applications for the home, such as high definition 3D TV, intelligent TV, on-line gaming, high quality AV entertainment, e-learning, security and others. All these need to be connected to the internet inside the home. Currently, the home network is typically built around CAT5/CAT6 copper cable. As bandwidth requirements climb, however, copper cables are reaching their maximum limitations.
To know more about why and how to build the “Home-Network System over Fiber”, please refer to the Application Notes accordingly.
Products for LAN
BendSafe® boxed cable: MMF 2C, 4C, 12C; 305m and 1000m.