Jet-Fueled Last Mile
teledotcom.com
11/08/00, 9:58 a.m. ET
Sweden may not be the epicenter for glass-blown art, but that isn't stopping L.M. Ericsson AB (Stockholm) from marketing its blown glass for people's homes in a unique way.
Ericsson is looking to ease service provider's efforts in wiring the last hundred yards of campus environments and buildings with a new, novel fiber cable package called Ribbonet that employs a prepackaged packet of fiber cable that's actually jet-propelled. That's right, jet-propelled.
According to Dr. Alan Atkins, vice president of Om Ericsson Cables AB, Ribbonet consists of between two and 12 strands of fiber that are "ribbonized" -- bonded flat to one another and bound to Kevlar yarn for support. Using compressed air, the fiber ribbon is then shot into its "microduct" casing, a four-millimeter (1/8-inch) plastic tube that serves a given location.
Before the fiber ribbon is deployed, the microduct tubing is snaked through the walls and ceilings of buildings and campus-type locations. According to Atkins, the tube-laying can be done by people who haven't been specially trained in handling glass. Atkins compares the ease of this part of the installation to using Lego building blocks; installers only need guard against overly tight bends.
The fibers are blown through the microducts with an air pistol fed through a backpack compressed air canister. As the fibers are blown through, the installer screws on the wall sockets and, once finished, heads down to the building's optical distribution frame to connect the fibers, according to Atkins.
The solution may be elegant, but it's not cheap. Atkins said Ribbonet costs roughly four times as much as regular fiber, but that the difference is made up by its ease of installation.
So far, Ribbonet has a few European deployments, but it hasn't yet come to American shores. That may change soon, since Ericsson is exploring opportunities to bring the technology to service providers dealing with the last hundred yards in U.S. cities.
If it's any indication of popularity, Ribbonet has been a hit in Iceland with convergent services provider Lina.Net, a subsidiary of the Reykjavik Energy Company, according to Atkins. Using Ribbonet, the provider is scheduled to connect 10,000 homes this year and a further 18,000 homes next year, he said. |
