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Some Improvements, Lots of Hype: 2025 fiber optic update

By Jim Hayes | Jan 15, 2025
Some Improvements, Lots of Hype: 2025 fiber optic update

In the last year, the major developments in fiber optic components greatly improved fiber density in networks and installations.

In the last year, the major developments in fiber optic components greatly improved fiber density in networks and installations. One change, the move from a 40-year-old design for single-mode fiber to a more modern design that is more resistant to bending and stress losses, has reduced cable sizes and increased cable ruggedness.

Fiber and connector improvements

Reducing the size and weight of fiber optic cables is an important development today, as the demand for bandwidth calls for more fibers in long-distance and middle-mile networks. Smaller cables with more fibers allow the installation of more of them in crowded underground ducts or lashing more to current aerial cable bundles without overloading the messenger.

Most of these new cables are also flexible ribbon designs, with a dozen fibers loosely bound together to allow ribbon-splicing in a fraction of the time required for single fiber splicing. That means contractors need to add a modern ribbon fusion splicer to their tool kit. If they have an older splicer for hard ribbons, it probably won’t work with the flexible ribbon cables. Hard ribbons are also being phased out—another big change.

Several new fiber optic connectors have been standardized that increase density at patch panels, a necessity with the new high-fiber-count cables. These connectors use LC ferrules but align them vertically instead of horizontally, allowing connectors to be moved closer for higher density.

The other major component changes are mostly invisible—fiber optic transceivers for networking equipment. As speeds continue to get faster to allow more bandwidth, coherent transmission is being adopted for speeds of 100 Gb per second or higher. What was once a complete printed circuit board in a system is now available in a plug-in module.

Likewise, the passive optical network  head-end system called an optical line terminal (OLT) has also been reduced to a plug-in module, allowing a service provider to eliminate a rack-mounted OLT with an internet router and a plug-in module. Both of these reduce system size and costs, making network expansion easier.

On the network and applications front, the big item last year was data centers. Remember that several years ago, the news was all about 5G cellular networks needing giant investments in fiber optic infrastructure. Just last year, it was fiber to the home, which was going to benefit from the $42.5 billion federal Broadband Equity Access Deployment program (we’re still waiting).

The A.I. hype

The demand for data centers last year was based on artificial intelligence (A.I.), which requires greater computing power and low-latency access to data. The solution is data centers with an extra level of complexity for high-speed computing and requirements for greater connection speed for moving vast amounts of data.

A.I. data centers also consume vast amounts of power—way more than the electric grid can provide in many areas of the country. Many of the proposals for powering them sound like jokes, except they could be serious. Restart coal-fired power plants. Power them with on-site nuclear reactors, including a new class of small modular reactors that haven’t been fully developed yet. 

Microsoft has topped everybody, first suggesting using fusion power, which has been researched for the last half-century with no concrete results, then offering to buy all the output of the mothballed reactor at Three Mile Island (not the one that melted down in the biggest nuclear disaster in the United States, but its twin) if the government (and taxpayers) would provide the cost to reactivate it.

Data centers are also creating a lot of NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) resistance. They consume power, and the cooling is noisy and harmful to the environment.

One should be skeptical about the A.I. hype. This technology creates a lot of misinformation, as it is often trained on online material full of misinformation. This results in A.I.-made misinformation online, which is used to train more A.I.—creating an endless, increasing loop of misinformation. And it’s well known that the major use for A.I.-­created video is making deepfakes. 

The frenzy about A.I. tops 5G and crypto­currency, but it is likely to burn out soon. Some top stock analysts are already saying that A.I. is just another tech bubble, just like the dotcom bubble that burst in 2001 and caused havoc in the fiber optic industry.

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that 2024 was another year of terrible natural disasters, underscoring the need to design electrical distribution systems and communications networks to withstand whatever disaster strikes and for the workforce to be ready to respond. 

stock.adobe.com / alona_s / gunaonedesign

About The Author

HAYES is a VDV writer and educator and the president of the Fiber Optic Association. Find him at www.JimHayes.com.

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