Vocus one-shot Data Centre solution
Vocus Communications provides high performance, high availability, and highly scalable communication solutions to its customers. The company needed a very high fibre count cable for a special ‘one shot’ customer install into a Data Centre. This required the largest possible number of fibres being fitted into the available duct space. Installing such a large number of fibres in one go had vast logistical benefits, whilst also increasing potential customer connection speed.
Vocus has been installing FlextubeTM for a number of years. However, its maximum fibre count of 720f was not enough for this particular project. Prysmian offered its newly developed 1728 fibre cable for deployment. This is only 23mm in overall diameter, approximately the same size as Prysmian’s current 624f standard loose tube cable. It is the largest FlextubeTM cable available and has the highest fibre density of any high fibre count terrestrial cable deployed in the world, (4.16f/mm2).
“This is a first for the telecommunications industry, globally,” said Alex West, Vocus Chief Operating Officer. “As part of our commitment to building the fibre network of the new millennium, we’ve been trialling this FlextubeTM fibre cable in smaller formats for three years and to see a world first being installed now is very exciting. One of the main benefits of this cable is the reduced cost per fibre pair. It costs roughly the same to install a 1728 fibre FlextubeTM cable as it does to install a traditional 624 fibre loose tube cable. Using the large fibre count 1728f cable more than halves the cost per installed fibre. This is a great advantage in a very competitive market”.
FirstPath: densest fibre cables across Sydney Harbour
FirstPath is Australia’s largest privately owned fibre access network. The wholesale access operator had been building infrastructure on both sides of Sydney Harbour, but had previously used fibre links that ran through the cross-harbour tunnel. The resulting links were longer than ideal and cable upgrades were a challenge.
FirstPath has laid two lengths of Prysmian, high-capacity submarine cable across Sydney Harbour. At 720 fibre cores, the FlexTubeTM is the densest underwater cable ever laid in Australia. Prysmian designed the unique cable, which was manufactured by the company’s Western Sydney plant specifically for this project. One length runs beneath the Harbour Bridge run, the other runs from Dawes Point to Blues Point. Benefits include lower latency and more connectivity options to the internet, data centres and private links between sites, allowing FirstPath to meet growing demand for its Residential, Business, Enterprise and Government services.
According to FirstPath chief executive Stephen Carter, the new cable would provide low-latency paths between Sydney and the North Shore, allowing the company to reach data centres such as ASX, Metronode, Equinix and Global Switch.
BendBrightXS
has the properties that matter in the access part: bend insensitivity, full backward compatibility with all existing fibre types and support for international standards. BendBrightXS optical fibre can be bent to a radius of just 7.5 mm without compromising the signal. It also resists kinking, is backwards compatible with all G.652 single mode fibres, and enables the use of space-saving components. BendBrightXS can cope with any type of higher bit rate, higher wavelength operation and WDM transmission, in all standardised bands. The cable’s 7.5 mm macro bending capability isn’t the focus for this application - its microbending and superior attenuation performance authorise aggressive designs while still opening all the bands. See article in NExsT issue 2 for more details.
Cables spanning Sydney harbour
Flextube®: Prysmian’s newly-developed 1728 OF Flextube® cable can be installed in the same 32 mm subducts that house 624 OF LT cable. By reducing the diameter of the actual fibre extremely high fibre counts can be deployed in congested right-of-ways. There’s no need for special handling or tools, the high-density solution can be stored and manipulated like ‘regular’ fibre. Testing in the field has shown that that the cables can be rolled out in up to half the time traditional loose tube cables would require and are easier to handle, splice and store.
Prysmian Flextube 1728 Cross-section