After Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd. (FEC) conducted an experiment in its Mie, Japan facility installing a 6912-fiber cable inside a 1.25-inch conduit, a data center in North America installed the same fiber-count cable on its campus to support live traffic.
FEC’s experiment at its facility demonstrated the installation of a 6912-fiber cable with an outer diameter of 1.14 inches (29 mm) in a 696-foot (200-meter) conduit with three 90-degree curves. The conduit’s inner diameter was 1.25 inches (32 mm). “The conduit used was a standard product installed in conventional data center campuses,” FEC said. “Engineers confirmed a maximum pulling tension of 84 pounds, well below the maximum pulling tension of 600 pounds specified for the cable.”
FEC further stated that the 6912-fiber cable was installed in a North American data center campus this year to support live traffic. At that data center site, the cable was installed in a 1.25-inch (32-mm) conduit with a maximum length of 1411 feet (430 meters). “The high fill ratio in this application is not typically recommended for outside plant cable installation,” FEC explained. “However, in this application, the end user was willing to accept the installation risk in return for maximum fiber density. The installation demonstrated that FEC’s 6912-fiber optical cable can be successfully installed into 1.25-inch conduit using appropriate tools, work procedures, and optimum installation conditions.”
Ichiro Kobayashi, general manager of FEC’s optical fiber and cable engineering department, commented, “The FEC 6912-fiber-optic cable at least doubled the fiber count possible in a 1.25-inch conduit, compared to competing available designs.”
The company said it will “continue to provide and improve ultra-high fiber count cabling, featuring small diameter and high density, along with the tools and training necessary to successfully build high-capacity networks.”
FEC further observed, “The continuing rapid increase in bandwidth demand has created an urgent need for data centers to increase the capacity of optical fiber networks. Within and between existing data center buildings, it has become necessary to maximize the fiber count in existing conduit to avoid expensive and time-consuming creation of new installations.”