Sunset Digital, a regional ISP in Southwest Virginia, has selected the OFS EZ-Bend drop cable for its fiber-to-the-home deployments.

 

The patent-pending EZ-Bend Technology is claimed to be the first that targets MDU applications and provides <0.1 dB/turn bending loss performance at 1550 nm using a solid glass fiber construction, while being fully splice and performance compatible with typical installed fibers.

 

Officials said that the solid glass construction of EZ-Bend Technology fiber enables the use of conventional fusion splicing equipment, conventional connector mounting, conventional connector cleaning processes, and avoids the compatibility pitfalls of hole assisted and nano-structured fibers. A robust optical cable design helps protect the optical fiber from being kinked or crushed.

 

Sunset Digital, with the help of the EZ-Bend Technology, aims to create a reliable, secure, high-speed network for its customers facilitating such high-bandwidth applications as HD IPTV (News - Alert), Telemedicine, and HD video downloads.

 

According to OFS officials, Sunset Digital's deployment uses a Mini LT flat drop cable with OFS' (News - Alert) AllWave FLEX fiber to connect rural single-family homes and businesses in Southwest Virginia.

 

After the flat drop cable is spliced to EZ-Bend cable at a network interface device (NID) on the side of the home, the EZ-Bend cable is routed indoors to the customer premises equipment (CPE).

 

Sunset Digital technicians with the help of the robust 4.8 millimeter EZ-Bend cable would be able to install the cable indoors with no existing pathways while the Fitel Splice-On Connector would allow direct terminations to the CPE, avoiding the cost and space of additional fiber management hardware in the home.

 

The solid glass structure of EZ-Bend leaves Sunset Digital the option of using mechanical splices or mechanical connectors if desired and enables easy fusion splicing.

"Sunset Digital has adopted the practice of installing our subscriber equipment indoors because of the cost savings with the CPE," said Paul Elswick, president and CEO of Sunset Digital, in a statement. “However, this requires us to take fiber inside a customer's home and through all sorts of installation conditions. The EZ-Bend product from OFS has the bend radius and the robustness to support the application, while leaving a higher quality of fit and finish that we require. Additionally, it terminates and splices like conventional fiber products so our field technicians need no additional training.”

 

"Sunset Digital is an innovative company, bringing wideband fiber-to-the-premises connectivity for the first time to hospitals, businesses, and rural single-family homes. Using the EZ-Bend cable technology made a lot of sense as it conforms to the homes' contours and can be stapled around sharp corners utilizing existing copper cable installation tools," said William Kloss, executive vice president of marketing and sales, North America and CALA.

 

Kloss said that this is enabled by EZ-Bend’s bending loss improvement of up to 500-times that of conventional single-mode fibers (SMF) type cables under the tight bends routinely encountered in residence installations.

 

OFS is a designer, manufacturer and provider of optical fiber, optical fiber cable, FTTX, optical connectivity and specialty photonics products.