HFCL Limited (HFCL) recently released its new Intermittently Bonded Ribbon (IBR) Cables in the United Kingdom. HFCL is a major supplier in the UK market and the new product will help the company’s plans for expansion into the region’s urban and rural markets as well as worldwide. IBR Cables will help speed up the adoption process of 5G and FTTP as well as meet growing bandwidth demands.
Despite the expansion of broadband access over the past few years in the UK, urban and rural communities still do not have high-speed broadband or in some cases any sort of broadband at all. According to a report published by the Communications and Digital Committee of the UK there are 7 million households that have no broadband or mobile internet access.
The Intermittently Bonded Ribbons are made of 12 optical fibers that are bonded together at specific intervals along the lengths of the cables. IBRs are flexible and can bend and conform to the space inside a cable, which means that they could be bundled together into cables that have twice the fiber packing density of traditional cables but in the same volume.
IBR Cables are currently available with up to 864 fibers, incorporating HFCL’s ITU-T compliant G.657A2/CW 1505 Cat 3 single-mode fiber. These cables are also compliant with various worldwide cable performance standards, including the IEC 60794 series and Telcordia GR-20.
IBR cables’ proprietary low friction jacket allows for enhanced jetting performance in 25/20 mini ducts that are common in cramped urban areas. These cables are useful in areas with limited space due to their high packing densities and small diameters and feature high productivity mass fusion slicing that can make installation faster and quicker restoration during an outage.
