The Fiber Optic Association, Inc. (FOA)

An Experienced Instructor Creates A Memorable CFOT Class Gilberto Guitarte teaches FOA CFOT Classes at Wake Tech in Raleigh, North Carolina. Gilberto is a veteran of the fiber optic industry and very experienced instructor Gilberto teaches classes in Spanish at Wake Tech and they are very popular, His last class had 16 students from Honduras, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Mexico! The course is 96 hours of class time so Gilberto has time for the usual course plus some special events. This course he just finished had a visit from Alexis Grieco at Prince Telecom https://princetelecom.com/, a rapidly expanding construction company in Raleigh. Prince Telecom is expanding their R&M in the Triangle area from 17 technicians to 34....so the whole class is going to apply right away, and I am willing to bet than more than 50% will get the job. How's that for placement of students? Gilberto also took advantage of his area, home to many of the fiber manufacturers. He made a visit to Corning HQ in Charlotte, NC to learn about data centers and came back with lots of OM3 MM cables for the class to use in labs. Later the entire class to Sumitomo in Raleigh where they learned about mass fusion splicing and saw the factory cabling a 3km 1728 fiber cable. All the students passed the CFOT certification test. - two made perfect scores on the exam. The graduation ceremony was attended by Wake Tech Dean of Vocational Training Pamela Little who will be retiring soon (We posted about this already a while back). In appreciation of her support of the program, FOA and Gilberto presented her with a plaque of appreciation. The class was also the subject of an article in the local Spanish news "QUE PASA?" https://lnkd.in/gSmfjsKb Well done, Gilberto!

ixed Wireless Access (FWA) vs Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) ISE Magazine Interview With Kevin Morgan, Clearfield https://lnkd.in/gND7vrni ISE: Share your perspective about the interplay between these two technologies in BSPs efforts to deliver gigabit speeds to their hard-to-reach customers? Morgan: All “over-the-air” wireless technologies have one common goal—take the signal from the air to a fiber network as quickly as possible. Both FWA and FTTP leverage the benefits of fiber. FTTP may not be economically viable in all cases—especially the

International Bandwidth Use Reaches New Heights Worldwide bandwidth demand continues to grow at a steady pace. Annual demand growth has decelerated slowly, but according to new data from TeleGeography’s Transport Networks Research Service, aggregate demand more than tripled between 2019 and 2023 to reach an eye-popping 5 Pbps. On a regional level, most parts of the world have seen very comparable growth at about 35-40% CAGR since 2019.The markets that stand out are Africa, where capacity growth is still surging at a nearly 50% CAGR, and the U.S. & Canada, where market maturity has slowed demand to around 30% CAGR. The Role of Content Providers Content and cloud providers—most specifically a handful of companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon—are firmly entrenched as the biggest users of network capacity globally. As recently as 2016, internet backbone providers accounted for the majority of demand. Not anymore. As of 2023, content and cloud networks accounted for more than 70% of all bandwidth usage. Images Copyright Telegeography

Broadband Politics in America - Will BEAD Survive? Many organizations in America are dealing with the issues created by the $43.5 billion Federal funding promised by the BEAD program. In the March FOA Newsletter https://lnkd.in/gdx873GM, we talked about how the influence of economics was important to understand in relation to BEAD. Last month on an article in this newsletter about the Test Business, we said, "The BEAD program was announced almost 3 years ago, details provided 2 years ago and to date projects have started. A recent NYTimes article https://lnkd.in/gC2_-2HZ on rural investment notes "The biggest risk is that politics stops the momentum created by these laws, because the investments are just getting started. For example, the money has not even begun to flow to local projects from the infrastructure act’s signature $42.5 billion investment to close the broadband gap." Now we want to discuss the influence of politics which is even more important in this, an election year in America. As we approach the election, the rhetoric always heats up and getting things done becomes more difficult. For example, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) passed during the pandemic to help low income households get connected has expired without serious effort to extend it. This may affect the use of BEAD funds since BEAD only covers part of the cost of building broadband networks, not operating them, and some service providers question the economics of operating these networks without some government support like ACP which was supporting ~20% of all US households. The demise of ACP is already affecting current construction https://lnkd.in/guVVtva4. To date, all 56 states and territories have submitted programs and 15 states have been approved https://lnkd.in/gZy7QG9g, including $1 billion for Kentucky which is well-prepared to begin using it. But while the states may have approvals for funding, they still have to choose projects, allocate and manage projects. Money has not started flowing yet because the funding process is complex and has many approval stages, typical of any multi-billion dollar Federal program. In the months leading up to the Fall election in the US, government tends to slow down in anticipation. If there is a change in administration, can BEAD survive?

What Does Rural Construction Really Look Like? NCTA https://www.ncta.com/about has created a 25 minute video about connecting three rural communities with fiber. It illustrates the challenges of rural broadband connectivity as well as showing the techniques used for fiber optic construction. It shows trenching, drilling and aerial construction realistically, illustrating the difficulties often encountered in fiber optic construction anywhere. This video is worth watching just to see what construction of fiber optic networks outside of urban areas looks like. Watch it at https://film.ncta.com.

Single Pair Ethernet For Specialized Applications Ethernet was invented by Xerox Palo Alto Research Labs over 50 years ago and has been the network protocol for practically everything for decades now. During the 1990s, Ethernet on unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable (Cat 5) was how enterprise networks were built. After Ethernet reached gigabit speeds, fiber became more common until wireless became fully capable of handling the typical user bandwidth and we all went mobile. UTP cable continued in use for connecting wireless access points because it could both connect to the access point and provide power. The standard "Cat 5" cable and its later updates to Cat 6A or Cat 7 are still in use, twenty to thirty years after they were standardized. But these 4-pair UTP cables are not ideal for all applications. Thus a new standard for Ethernet on a single pair UTP was created aimed at automotive, industrial, smart building and sensor applications. Part of the advantage of single pair Ethernet is obvious from this photo. Single pair UTP cable is smaller, lighter and generally cheaper. While Ethernet dominates most communications, industrial applications have been diverse. Some single pair serial links like RS232/RS422 are standards but there are also dozens of proprietary networks. Single pair Ethernet can be used instead of those networks and make interfacing to Ethernet networks used in company data networks easier. Compared to the communications world's Ethernet, now headed for terabit speeds, single pair Ethernet is really slow, 10 Mb/s, but for the applications it is designed for, that's quite adequate. There are two versions for short and long reach: 10BASE-T1L: Long reach (1km, 18AWG) 10BASE-T1S: Short reach (15-25m, 24-26AWG) As with Category 5e/6/6A/7 UTP, the single pair cable can support power over Ethernet (POE) to power remote devices, a big advantage for sensors and controllers. Introduction to Single Pair Ethernet - Ethernet Alliance https://lnkd.in/g3CaEYBq... Lapp Group/Control Automation Photo https://lnkd.in/gJhMjtCy T

Super C Band Expands DWDM Spectrum Fiber optic network transmission speeds are increasing and coherent transmission is getting faster and cheaper, but fiber optic networks must continue to expand capability to keep up with the world's bandwidth demands. Advances in coherent protocols is gaining bandwidth, but with the disadvantage of shorter link lengths. A promising advancement is expanding the DWDM wavelength spectrum into what is called "Super C-band). Super C-band expands the available spectrum by 27% with minimal changes. Since Super C-band has been deployed in the Asia-Pacific region for several years, components are available. Lasers and EDFA fiber amplifiers are already available to support the extended spectrum. Standardization of Super C-band is expected to be added to standard and extended C-band. The cable plant that currently supports DWDM should also support Super C-band; it's only an incremental change in the wavelengths used. A good point to make here is that many networks should be more thoroughly tested - fiber characterization becomes more important. Read more from Infinera https://lnkd.in/gY3vgscG

Do You Trust Your OTDR? We've often said the most common topic for technical questions receive at FOA is testing, and most of those are about OTDRs. This month we received a particularly interesting inquiry with a number of traces that the sender wanted help interpreting them. All the traces indicated "FAIL". Let's start with the traces, all taken on "autotest": Test pulse width: (Top Row) 300ns @1310 3000 ns @ 1550 Test pulse width: (Middle Row) 10000ns @1310 10 ns @ 1550 Test pulse width: (Bottom Row) 30ns @1310 3000 ns @ 1550 The person inquiring had been reviewing these traces for the customer. He was familiar with OTDR testing and trace analysis. The thing he noted was the odd choice of pulse widths on the traces made by the OTDR on autotest mode. Note the overload on the traces with very long test pulses. Also note the upper left trace which almost looks OK until you see the flat-topped reflectance peaks and the response of the overloaded OTDR receiver, the fiber showing a gain instead of attenuation between about 800 and 2700 feet! When asked about the traces and the long test pulse widths, "the contractor says they cannot reduce the pulse width due to problems in the fiber, that fiber problems must be resolved in order to get a decent trace." The likely cause of this was neither the operator nor their supervisor ever looked at the traces as the fibers were being tested nor before submitting them to the customer. If they had, they would have seen the OTDR was making several mistakes in setup on autotest and was the problem of the failures. That OTDR needs to go back to the manufacturer for repair and calibration. And the operator and their supervisor needs some training on OTDR use - and reviewing documentation before submitting it to a customer! Think about all the time wasted and the cost incurred in this job. FOA has always said that autotest should not be trusted until it has been checked by an experienced OTDR user. We agree that many modern OTDRs produce quite good results on autotest, but instruments fail sometimes and that can be a very serous problem. PS: There were some good traces in the lot we reviewed, but they showed another problem. The receive reference cable being used for testing seemed to have a bad or dirty connection causing high loss in those traces. The test tech seemed to be ignoring testing and/or cleaning their reference cables. FOA recommends all OTDR users learn more about their instrument and its use. We have information on the FOA Guide on OTDRs https://lnkd.in/gE9Q-WWi, a Fiber U Course on OTDRs, and our new OTDR Trainer https://lnkd.in/gD2YXAzb.

A Quiet But Important Change In The Fiber You Buy Singlemode Fiber - G.652 becomes like G.657 Bend Insensitive Fiber Last month, FOA technical advisor Joe Botha provided some interesting data on the splicing compatibility of conventional G.652 singlemode fiber and G.657 bend insensitive (BI) fiber that showed excellent compatibility. That got us thinking. With so many cable designs today, like microcables or high fiber count cables, requiring bend-insensitive fibers, would it make sense to make all or most singlemode fibers as bend insensitive fiber. We reached out to some of our contacts at fiber manufacturers and asked them. What we got was a good tutorial on BI fibers and an answer to our question. First the technical tutorial. Conventional G.652 singlemode fiber has been around about 40 years and the standard for it is almost as old. The specifications are straightforward. G.652 Singlemode Outside Diameter: 125 µm Mode Field Diameter (MFD): 8.6-9.2 µm @ 1310 nm And several new specifications added more recently: Low water peak. With maximum attenuation of 0.4 dB/km across a band from 1310 nm to 1625 nm Minimum bend radius: 30mm With the introduction of BI singlemode fiber, new standards were written as G.657 fiber with several grades, each having a minimum bending diameter and loss specification. bend insensitive fiberG.652 fiber bend radius 30mm (The G.657 standard notes "ITU-T G.652 fibres deployed at a radius of 15 mm generally can have macrobending losses of several dB per 10 turns at 1625 nm.") G.657 fiber (bending loss specs at 1550nm) G.657.A1 bend radius 10mm, loss 0.75dB/turn G.657.A2 bend radius 7.5mm, loss 0.5dB/turn G.657.B3 bend radius 5mm, loss 0.15dB/turn (for special applications) Designing singlemode fibers requires tradeoffs. A smaller mode field diameter will have better bend performance but higher attenuation. Larger MFD provides lower attenuation, and the majority of G.652 fiber, which is much of the installed base, is a MFD of 9.2 µm. Simply reducing MFD for better bend performance leads to mismatch losses when splicing or connecting fibers and causes OTDR tests with gainers, requiring time consuming bidirectional testing. The right way to create a BI singlemode fiber is to redesign it to get BI performance while maintaining a larger MFD for compatibility and lower attenuation. And that's what has already happened at some fiber manufacturers with standard 250 micron and smaller buffer coating fibers.

Congratulations to the Dean of Vocational Training Pamela Little! Wake Workforce Community Education is part of Wake Tech Community College FOA approved school #383