Innovative Fiber Optic Installation Plans for Future Needs
October 31.2022 | Essential Infrastructure
20 years ago fiber optic data cabling might not have been thought of as essential infrastructure, but with cloud services, social media, and video streaming, access to data has become critical infrastructure around the world. With the $1 trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill, fiber optic networks join the traditional road, bridge, and transit systems as infrastructure projects funded by the bill. Long distance telecommunications have run on fiber optic cables for decades, but large bundles of fiber optic cabling are now being installed to connect data centers to their operators, customers, other data centers, as well as the main backbones of the internet.
Our customer in the Northeast United States took this connectivity to the next level with an innovative mass-scale data center development strategy. Instead of burying standard fiber conduits individually as needed they utilize a large outer conduit housing pre-filled with 30 fiber conduits. This approach allows them to dig once but add the fiber as needed in the future, resulting in significant cost savings over the life of the project while offering the scalability and connectivity these growing communities’ demand.
But the innovative design wasn’t without its challenges. With 30 conduits running parallel in the main housing and up to 200,000 strands of fiber in those housings, how would they keep the conduits neatly bundled over the 40+ mile run? You turn to the experts in cable management solutions, BAND-IT. Utilizing stainless steel banding was an obvious choice for this installer as they needed strength to bundle the conduits, ease of installation to reduce labor costs, but also corrosion resistance to handle all the environmental conditions of the Northeast. The choice of banding material and fastening method is critical to the project success, as these systems must last several decades buried underground.
BAND-IT is proud to work with our distribution partners and their customers to identify or design a solution for one-off projects or major infrastructure construction. How can BAND-IT solve your joining or cable management challenge? Contact Us to Learn More.