FTTH providers have long been challenged to find a connectorized fiber drop product that fulfills all their deployment wishes: a drop that is easily placed in a single pass, provides protection for the fiber, restores simply and quickly, and where excess slack is cleanly managed. Finding a solution that incorporates all of these features has been impossible…until now.
FieldShield D-ROP fiber drop assemblies combine all of the best features of different fiber drops into a single product (see video).
While traditional drop solutions were considered a cost-effective solution because of their low cost (CAPEX), they rarely addressed the issue of repair and replacement (OPEX). A single drop cut can take as many as 4 truck rolls to restore service.
- Truck roll one: Determine if there is a break and where (1 hour)
- Truck roll two: Locate buried utilities (1 hour)
- Truck roll three: Replace the drop by plowing, boring or open trenching (2-4 hours)
- Truck roll four: Splice the drop (1 hour)
This equals a very large OPEX price tag. (5-7 hours) X $100/hr (average loaded tech rate)
Alternatively, using a FieldShield D-ROP drop cable allows for replacement to be done with as little as 1 single truck roll.
- Single truck roll: Locate the break, repair the break in the microduct with a water-tight coupler using regular hand tools, push or pull a replacement pre-terminated drop and plug the customer in. (2 hours)
As network providers strive to reduce placement costs, they have often had to sacrifice features such as pre-connectorized drops or the ability to easily manage excess slack in order to get the other benefits of CIC (cable-in-conduit). The D-ROP product allows the provider to glean the cost savings of pre-connectorized drops while also realizing the benefit of a one pass CIC solution that can easily be tailored to any length, with the added benefit of easy slack storage for both outdoor and indoor environments.
Both the outdoor 10/6 direct bury (10mm OD/6mm ID) and the indoor riser-rated 8.5/6 (8.5mm OD/6mm ID) D-ROP solutions allow the technician to tailor the length of the microduct using a standard tool to simply ring cut to the desired length and slide the excess duct over the pre-connectorized assembly. Unlike traditional flat drop, the small diameter (2mm or 3mm) pre-installed fiber is both durable and easy to handle, which allows for easy slack storage at the customer premise or at the point of connection. This single pass, pre-connectorized drop system saves both time and money by eliminating the need for a highly trained technician and splicing of the fiber.
Clearfield’s D-ROP fiber drop assemblies offer:
- A single pass to place both conduit and fiber
- A ruggedized pathway that can be easily trimmed to length
- A pathway that can be easily restored when damaged
- A fiber that is easily stored
- A pre-connectorized fiber that requires no splicing
Visit SeeClearfield.com for more information, and for more on how D-ROP’s restorability saves Opex and improves customer satisfaction over the traditional solutions, download the whitepaper.