Copper Cable: I Heard Optical Fiber Wants to Replace Me Completely?

The competition between the optical fiber and copper cable has been around for more than ten years. Nowadays, with the continuous emergence of various new services, such as cloud computing as well as 5G, the scale of the data center has already been extended greatly, and this extension will still go on. Therefore, as the optical fiber is now found to be holding the characteristics of lighter weight and lower cabling price, the demand for optical fiber is getting higher and higher. In some large data centers, the proportion of optical fiber is now as high as 70%, which far exceeds the proportion of copper cabling.

However, in contrast to optical fiber, copper cable still has its unique advantages: In fact, in short-distance (about 100m) horizontal wiring, optical fiber is actually inferior to copper cable in terms of its maintenance and cost.

As the core material of optical fiber is very special, which is a kind of glass fiber, the optical fiber is, in fact, extremely fragile and may be damaged if you are not careful. Besides, in the current market, although the price of optical fiber has been reduced, it is still much higher than that of copper cable.

And in applications such as voice signal transmission, wireless access as well as PoE power supply system, optical fiber can never replace the copper cable.

The reasons are as follows:

(1) On account of that the optical fiber and copper cable using different data transmission methods, voice signals can only be transmitted by cabling products, for it employs the method of electrical pulse transmission.

(2) Just as previously mentioned above, since the material of the fiber core of the optical fiber is a special glass fiber, which can not conduct electricity. However, the copper in the copper cable can. Therefore, if you need to supply power while transmitting data, optical fiber can not do it. The only choice you is copper cable.

If you have any interest in fiber patch cord, welcome to contact Copperled Technology Co., Ltd. (Tel: 0755-27896171)