Make way, coax, copper, Powerlines, G.hn and Wi-Fi. Here comes plastic optical fiber for home networks where high speeds are required for HD video streams. Swisscom this week led a round of investors who put $5 million in Ireland-based Firecomms, which makes semiconductors and devices designed to be used with plastic optical fiber (POF) networks in home networks, industrial automation and in cars.
Proponents call POF the perfect consumer optical fiber because the fiber, the links and the connectors are inexpensive and easy to connect and install. POF wires can be used for low-speed, short-distance (up to 100 meters) applications with speeds currently up to 100 Mbps.
Firecomms has positioned POF as a replacement for CAT5 Ethernet wiring in homes where coax is not available, where coax is “bad” or where there’s no coax where the user wants an outlet. Another market is new home construction, not exactly a boom market today, where POF wires can be installed along with the electrical wires, as it is immune from electrical interference. POF uses standard Ethernet networking.
A higher-grade POF which uses perfluorinated polymer fibers can be used for higher-speed applications such as in data centers. Telco and cableco fiber-optic networks to the home use glass optical fiber instead of plastic. Although its manufacturing cost is currently lower, glass optic fiber is more expensive to install. Glass requires special handling – it can’t be bent – and installation. Plastic fiber is easier to connect.
POF wires have a core size up to 100 times as large as glass fiber. The larger core allows 96% of the core to transmit data, making it ideal for very high bandwidth/signal transmission over very short distances. In addition to its use in the home, it could be used to connect the home to the telco’s nearest fiber-optic node, replacing slower copper wires.
There are two sizes of POF wires for home networks: 3 and 4 millimeter. Both have the same-size fiber core, provide the same speed and cover the same distance. The only difference is that the larger one has a bigger protective sleeve.
Plastic fibers absorb light more than glass, which limits the distance at which they are effective. They also have a lower data capacity than glass fibers.
A Gigabit version of POF currently has about a 15- to 20-meter maximum distance. Firecomms said it’s working on a version that would use the same wire but go up to 50 meters.
Increased demand for high-speed home networks has prompted interest in POF as a possibility for next-generation Gigabit links inside the house.
Firecomms touts POF as the ideal home networking cable.
Firecomms makes semiconductor transceivers that are used in high-speed plastic optical fiber components for IPTV home networks and in-car multimedia entertainment systems. It manufactures optoelectronic devices and transceivers that are designed for the delivery of voice, video and Internet traffic over communication links based on plastic optical fiber.
It said its OptoLock technology is ideal for 100 Mbps Ethernet applications with stringent quality of service requirements such as in IPTV gateways, set-top boxes and hubs.
Digital media fans pray for fiber optic to every home. Firecomms says its Optolock technology has created the possibility of using fiber in every home.
Last month Firecomms said its OptoLock interconnect technology has been integrated into STMicroelectronics’ reference design for an IPTV set-top box. It said equipment based on the design will be easy-to-use, low-cost housing for instant termination of bare POF. It will enable the quick and easy connection of POF in home networks directly to the set-top box.
The design of OptoLock, it said, enables the fiber to be cut and terminated to the exact required length on site, allowing even the most novice consumer to quickly and easily terminate the bare optical fiber.
Swisscom is Switzerland’s incumbent telco and has 5.3 million mobile customers, 5.4 million fixed phone lines and 1.7 million broadband connections. Swisscom’s investment partner, Par Lange, said Firecomms’ technology has enabled his company to offer a Swisscom-branded fiber-optic self-installed solution.
“Our engineers,” he said, “have recognized the advantage of Firecomms’ plastic optical fiber technology in reducing and simplifying the install time for our IPTV subscribers.” He said the investment would lead to more collaboration between the two companies and result in “the widespread adoption of POF technology throughout the IPTV world.”
Mitsubishi makes the plastic optical fiber wires, which are already used in cars and aircraft because they are immune to any electrical noise. About the thickness of a string and highly bendable, the plastic fiber can be hidden under the carpet or baseboards.
Motorola has a gateway with a POF connector built in. It also has adapters that allow multiple plastic optical fiber wires to be connected to each other like garden hoses. Swisscom offers a self-install kit that contains two media connectors and 50 meters of POF. It retails for about $100.
POF proponents tout it for home networks because it’s stable, based on a standardized technology, provides high performance and is low maintenance.