The Increasing Importance of Fiber Optic Cabling Infrastructures

In an effort to provide its constituents with a strong communications infrastructure, the government of the Dominican Republic recently announced a $61 million project that aims to expand the availability of fiber optics throughout the country. The network will provide coverage to an area of 3,000 square kilometers, nearly seven percent of the nation’s territory.

The project reinforces the practical necessity of fiber optics and marks one of many undertaken as the technology rapidly becomes integrated into the Latin and South American communications infrastructure. Additionally, the Dominican Republic’s decision to invest further in fiber optics continues to a global trend of accelerating support of the technology.

Compared to its legacy counterpart, copper wire, fiber optics provide users with a variety of benefits, including:

• More capacity: With fiber optics, data is transmitted as light through strands of glass as thin as human hair. Because of that thinness, a considerably higher amount of strands can be placed inside of cable, meaning more traffic is routed through smaller spaces.
• Faster speeds: Whereas transmission through a copper wire is bound by the physical properties of the metal, fiber optic cables send data as light, providing much faster speeds of transmission.
• Affordability: The price of such cables is considerably less than the price of copper. What’s more, because of the speed by which data can be sent through fiber optics, businesses don’t have to worry about upgrading infrastructure in the future. Faster speeds can be realized with improved equipment attached to either end of the cables.
• Transmission through light: In a copper system, two signals could certainly interfere with one another. We all remember talking on a landline and hearing our neighbors talking on theirs. But with fiber optics, data is sent as light. And light signals don’t interfere with one another, meaning cleaner signals are transmitted.

Fiber Optic Cabling Investment Looks to Grow Worldwide

Because of the substantial benefits that fiber optics afford, it comes as no surprise that governments across the globe continue to invest in improved fiber infrastructures. One could expect this trend to continue into the future.

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