Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1192126
36 I ICT TODAY 36 I ICT TODAY As the need for high-speed, high- bandwidth technologies multiplies each year, so does the infrastructure required to handle it. The installation of optical fiber, therefore, has become the norm in the past couple decades to meet ever-growing bandwidth- hungry applications. The cost of optical fiber has decreased over the years due to its high demand, there- by making it much more feasible to deploy for virtually every end user. Essentially, there are three methods of installing optical fiber: 1. Conventional cabling through which optical fiber cable is pulled by large work crews into innerduct or mesh ducts and into conduit. This is the most well-known installation method within the ICT industry. A COMPARISON OF BLOWN FIBER AND CONVENTIONAL OPTICAL FIBER INSTALLATION METHODS By Kathy Woolf, RCDD 2. Blown cable systems that use a blowing technique to install similarly constructed optical cables as conventional cabling but at a reduced outside diameter (OD); various manufacturers of blown cable systems provide different types of ducts, micro- cable fiber counts, and equip- ment. No two blown cable sys- tems are exactly alike. 3. Blown fiber systems through which optical fiber bundles rather than cables are blown into empty tube cables for the formation of the fiber pathway infrastructure. Blown fiber technology was intro- duced in North America in 1991 through an exclusive manufac- turer license with British Telecom (BT-London) that invented the fiber blowing technology in the early 1980s. Subsequently, other manufacturers acquired the BT license. Likewise, no two blown fiber systems are exactly alike. Because the ICT industry often mistakenly refers to blown cable and blown fiber systems synonymously as "blown fiber" or "air blown fiber" (which is actually a U.S. registered trademark of a blown fiber system manufacturer), it is important to emphasize that these two systems are distinctly different technologies and fiber installation methods. Based on knowledge and years of hands-on field experience with instal- lations of both conventional cabling (1) and blown fiber (3), the informa- tion provided herein is confined to these two installation methods. Both