Draka doubles BendBright-XS output in 2010

NOVEMBER 4, 2010 -- Draka Communications says that year-to-date 2010 shipments for its flagship bend-insensitive fiber BendBright-XS have doubled over last year, bringing cumulative output to over 2 million km since its launch.

The bend-insensitive fiber is used primarily for fiber to the home (FTTH) deployment, and is particularly useful in cabling multiple dwelling units (MDUs) and office buildings.

“This growth is predominantly due to a leap in FTTH project expansion around the world,“ says Alain Bertaina, product marketing, single-mode fibre, at Draka Communications. “It underlines the fact that the challenges of accelerating FTTH deployment, reflected in the latest ITU G.657 recommendations, are comfortably accommodated with BendBright-XS.”

In November 2009, the ITU-T revised its G.657 recommendation for bend-insensitive singlemode optical fibers and cables for the access network, to incorporate the latest industry technology advances. The specification now recognizes that improved bending performance further reduces costs for operators rolling out FTTH, while addressing current regulatory concerns for end-to-end fiber consistency, Draka says. This revised ITU recommendation fully preserves the original structure, with A and B categories, for total backward compatibility with the earlier G.657 version.

Within this context, Draka says it has used G.657.A2 bend-insensitive fibers to innovate installation techniques, encompassing all of the features of G.652.D enhanced singlemode fibers while providing high resistance to macro and micro-bending.

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