Sumitomo Electric Lightwave (www.sumitomoelectric.com) recently announced the successful installation and deployment of its FutureFLEX Air-Blown Fiber Cabling System (www.futureflex.com) at the new Washington Convention Center. The new convention center is the largest building in the nation's capitol, spanning 2.3 million square feet. The FutureFLEX system is the fiber-optic infrastructure of the center's local area network.
"It was our goal to construct not only one of the largest convention centers in the nation, but one that provided an advanced fiber-optic network that would enable us to respond to the quick upgrades, changes, additions, or future expansions needed to service our customers in the best way possible," says Michael Waxer, the center's chief technology officer. "FutureFLEX helped us achieve that goal. With the air-blown fiber infrastructure, we can take the guesswork out of forecasting future technology and network needs by blowing fiber as we need it. Also, it helps us to be fiscally responsible with planning and budgeting. We pay as we go, one project at a time."
In a release announcing the successful implementation, Sumitomo said that the convention center's air-blown fiber system allows for quick and easy fiber installation and rerouting by blowing fiber bundles through a network of tubes at speeds of 100 to 150 feet per minute to anywhere in an around the center where fiber is needed. The center's FutureFLEX backbone includes 114 intermediate distribution frames, and accommodates the frequent changes, upgrades, and customized fiber routing from event to event required by its various customers. With air-blown fiber, Sumitomo explains, the center eliminates the cost of laying dark, unused fiber. Instead, the center's network managers can immediately scale and reconfigure the network without having to predict future network growth and other unpredictable variables, allowing for project planning days or even hours in advance, rather than months or years in advance.
In their decision to employ Sumitomo's FutureFLEX system, system designers for the convention center also weighed the system's ability to reconfigure the fiber in a continuous, point-to-point installation, which eliminates the disruption to the facility that occurs when pulling conventional cable. Sumitomo says the FutureFLEX system's point-to-point installation allows for fiber to be installed easily in limited- or no-access areas like the 35-foot concealed ceilings that underlie the center's 17-acre roof.
Typically, two people can install or blow one mile of air-blown fiber-optic cable in 45 minutes. According to Sumitomo, that compares to two or three days, for six to eight people, required to pull conventional fiber-optic cable the same distance. "As the only bundled air-blown fiber system in North America, FutureFLEX provides benefits tha no other cabling system on the market today offers," says Scott Mobley, project manager for Tech Inc., the company in charge of the Washington Convention Center installation. "The ease of installation and reconfiguration when using FutureFLEX significantly reduces the time, labor, and cabling costs associated with rerouting a conventional network."
