Corning VP: Fiber Savings From Ground Up

Even fiber advocates agree deployment is labor intensive and time consuming, but vendors like Corning Optical Communications are using technology to reduce service providers' overhead and increase revenue.

Demand for fiber was one reason Optical Communications' sales grew 16% in Corning's second quarter 2018, ended June 30. "Strong market demand and the continuing success of our co-innovation have resulted in faster than expected progress toward our goal of $5 billion in annual sales by 2020, with continued growth thereafter," said Wendell Weeks, Corning chairman and CEO, during the company's second-quarter earnings call earlier this month, according to the Seeking Alpha transcript.

The vendor has reduced operators' need to splice cables by developing a line of "pre-connectorized" solutions, Bob Whitman, vice president of Market Development of Carrier Networks at Corning Optical Communications, told Broadband World News. These not only reduce time but also eliminate human error, he said.

"We started with a one-fiber connector that you can make one drop to the home much, much faster and at a lower cost and then we created multi-fiber connectors that can be just plugged in," said Whitman. "[Also] we introduced a multi-purpose solution that eliminates another point of splicing where you can simply connect in a splitter location or a central point in the network [and] take out essentially a day's worth of work and simply plug these splitter cabinets in."

In addition to new installs, Corning has eliminated some splicing in restoration work via a field-hardened connector. The vendor continues to explore new areas in which it can eliminate splicing, Whitman said.

"We are finding more and more ways to add connectivity into the network," he added. "There will always be a need to splice in some form or fashion. We have the ability to put connectors on the end of cables in the long run, but that's not always a practical thing for carriers to deploy that way."

The price difference between pre-connectorized and traditional fiber is negligible, said Whitman. A network's ROI does not depend on the cost of cable, he said, although the ability to cut fiber deployment costs and time should empower providers to accelerate their ability to earn revenue from this investment.

Bend it like broadband
Corning continues to focus on optimizing fiber for applications, attenuation and band insensitivity, Whitman said. Making fiber do more over longer lengths, faster, is a continual goal.

In addition, the vendor supports the efforts of service providers -- like behemoth a customer Verizon -- to leverage software-defined networking, virtualization and next-generation optical technologies in their move to a unified access network. Last year, Corning developed a multi-purpose platform, Whitman said.

"If you can monetize that network by combining applications you can build at a far lower cost and get more revenue from that network," he said. "We've created a platform solution that allows carriers to create more access points on the network, then manage those access points from whatever network service needs to be provided."

And although today's move toward single unified access networks are hampered by operators' use of a central office, mobile switch center and other different systems that cannot necessarily use a single fiber, that "could be something that occurs in the future," Whitman said.

Related posts:

• Monitoring Fiber for Maintenance & Improved Profitability
• Corning Whips Up More Fiber
• Verizon CNO: 'Fiber Is Sexy Again'

— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter or @alisoncdiana.