Optical fiber components continue to change, making the deployment of networks less expensive, simpler and quicker to deploy, and easier to maintain. In the early days of optical fiber networks, every step in the deployment of a network had some labor-intensive device that was required to complete the system. We’ve seen huge changes that reduce the labor requirements and the space needed to deploy, while at the same time speeding up the rate of deployment. The highest cost involved in making a fiber optic network is labor - and difficulty increases that cost. By having fewer product components and using products that combine functions, you’ll find the overall network costs drop due to less complexity while keeping flexibility.
Consider splice operations. General practice was to use a separate splice enclosure for optical splicing. This is true for the hub, field and customer premises. In the hub, you really had two choices. You either used rack space to splice or you mounted some kind of cabinet on a wall and spliced inside. Most people would rather splice on a wall to save rack space, but that still takes up floor space.
Also, consider adding a cross-connect cabinet in the field. The past way of doing this was to have a vault sitting under or next to the cabinet and “stub” your cabinet to an OSP splice closure in the vault. In either the Inside Plant (ISP) or Outside Plant (OSP), space and difficulty increase with separate splicing facilities. Both material and labor costs increase when buying and installing a wall-mountable cabinet or a sealed-splice enclosure. Both of these items must be bought with accessories, and installed using labor. They also take up space in both the warehouse before use and as a permanent part of the system. They require craft knowledge and material management of multiple SKUs. As an example, the OSP closure used with a cross-connect cabinet is normally placed in a vault. The splice closure will require splice trays and extra parts that may not come with the basic closure. The vaults must be stored and are not only costly to buy, but costly to install. What if we could take all that splicing and place it in the cabinet itself…with no loss of function, no increase in size of cabinet and no extra parts that need to be bought? What if you could actually have a cleaner, easier to maintain cabinet because you moved the splicing into the cabinet itself?
Clearfield® has done just that with the Clearview® Blue Cassette that provides in-cassette splicing. Instead of having simple patch panels in the cabinet with 900µm fibers running down to a cable, the ribbon or buffer tube itself is routed directly to the Clearview Blue Cassette. This allows the splicing to be done just behind the patch panel in an enclosed, prepared cassette. This can use both mass fusion and single-fiber splicing and maintenance is simple since each cassette can be easily moved from the cabinet and reentered without turning off service to fibers that are not affected. A tech does not need to look at a splicing plan to figure out what tray and fiber color to find in a separate splicing device. The tech simply opens the cassette and looks right behind the connector. It’s obvious!
Clearfield’s in-cassette splicing solution in the Clearview Blue Cassette goes in any type of fiber network. The cassette connectivity and configuration options work in hubs, traditional cross-connect/interconnect cabinets, FTTH, FTTB, MDUs, MTUs, Local Area Networks and more. They also work across the full temperature spectrum. Almost anywhere you have a connector that needs to be spliced to fiber cable, performing the splice within the Clearview Blue Cassette helps with cost and labor savings. The next time you need to build or extend a network, think of the Clearfield Blue Cassette.
Contact us and we’ll get you saving costs through in-cassette splicing.
By Bill Sawyer
Bill Sawyer has a rich and varied career in the field of telecommunications. A degreed aerospace engineer, Bill has served the CATV, IXC, CLEC and wireless markets for 25 years with positions including Field, Systems and Application Engineering.
As a Clearfield Application Engineer, Bill assists the CATV MSO market in all aspects of FTTx deployments with specific emphasis on face-to-face technical issues such as installation, design guidance, product selection and problem resolution.