Customers go to great lengths when designing and building a FTTH network. The time, labor and cost is significant. Depending on the size of the FTTH deployment, most build costs will be in the upper 100’s of thousands of dollars – if not millions. In an effort to keep costs manageable engineers will keep a close eye on the price they pay for products for each segment of the network. Clearfield panels, cabinets and access products are often chosen for their competitive pricing, but also because of the high quality of product.

While great lengths and expense are taken when purchasing the best fiber panels, cabinets, terminals drop cables and active equipment, a disconnect happens when it comes time to hook the active equipment to the network, and customers very often go for the least expensive patch cords.

When painstaking time, effort and funds are spent building the network, and it comes time to plug it in and make it all go, why is the cheapest patch cord chosen? The typical response that I get is that they are a commodity and they can get them cheap from a multitude of manufacturers.  My response?  The network is only as strong as the weakest link. At Clearfield we manufacture our patch cords with the same quality, attention to detail, and performance as our other products.  When it comes to patch cords not all are created equal.

Clearfield guarantees a .2 Db insertion loss on fiber terminations. You can’t get any better quality than that.

By: Brian Schrand – Applications Engineer Manager