Surpassing your deployment milestones by doubling the rate of your PON cabinet deployments is possible. Clearfield® customers do it every day with modular, building block architectures using in-cassette splicing.
No Splice Case. No Vault. No Inventory Management.
Splicing inside the Clearview® Cassette will:
- Cut in half the time to place a cabinet
- Minimize your labor costs
- Reduce operational/maintenance costs
How is this possible? Let’s dive in. Fiber distribution hub (FDH) cabinets come in many different styles, shapes, and sizes. Most popular sizes range from 144 to 432 count FDH cabinets. A common legacy method of FDH cabinet deployment ships with a high-count fiber tail from the factory that gets spliced into the feeder (F1) and distribution (F2) fibers in the field within a splice case at a vault near the cabinet. This operation requires opening the vault, pumping the manhole, setting up safety cones and signs impacting traffic, prepping multiple F1 and F2 cables, opening the splice case, tray preparation, bringing the fiber tails to the splice point, splicing the fibers, closing the splice case, and properly securing the F1 and F2 cables. Depending on the size of the cabinet and whether it is an aerial or pole mounted cabinet, the total installation time takes between six to nine hours. Clearfield supports this type of installation using our modular, 12-port patch-only Clearview Cassette with the fiber tail spliced in at the factory.
Alternatively, to stay competitive and reduce operational costs inherent with legacy technologies, service providers are turning to patch and splice deployments using Clearfield’s in-cassette splicing as they upgrade their outside plant to an all-fiber network.
With Clearfield’s in-cassette splicing, the FDH cabinets ship from the factory without fiber tails but equipped with Clearview cassettes ready for splicing in the field. The Clearfield cabinet is safer for the technicians as there are no traffic concerns. The F1 and F2 fibers terminate directly in the cassette. Many installation sites start with a cabinet that is fifty percent loaded with cassettes. The beauty of this setup is that providers can align their capital costs with subscriber take rates. This operation requires prepping only as many F1 and F2 cables as there are cassette ports, prepping the cassette, bringing the cassette to the fiber tails for splicing, splicing the fibers in the cassette, putting the cassettes back in the cabinet, and properly securing the F1 and F2 cables. Depending on the size of the cabinet and whether it is an aerial or pole mounted cabinet, the total installation time takes between two to five hours. That’s a 50% savings in installation time and we all know that time is money!
With homes passed affecting service provider success, rapid service turnup has become a necessity. Increased market demand for gigabit-class services is driving greenfield deployments, competitive overbuild, and replacement of legacy copper and coax with future-proof networks. At the same time, given that skilled fiber technician shortages continue to persist, carriers look for ways to overcome deployment challenges by taking advantage of new techniques and craft-friendly technology. Using products tailored to simplify installation by reducing complexity can significantly cut installation times. Clearfield’s improved fiber cabinet designs eliminate the need for a splice case and the additional installation time. By taking advantage of more efficient technologies, carriers can cut fiber cabinet installation times in half—speeding time to revenue.
By Kevin Morgan
Kevin leads the marketing efforts for Clearfield as Chief Marketing Officer, joining the company in 2016. He also serves as 2022 Chair of the Fiber Broadband Association’s Board and previously was a two-time elected Board Chair (2015, 2019) after first joining the Board in 2010.