The deployment I’m trying to decipher is in town, overbuilding Mediacom. The town has around 1,400 population, around 600 houses.
So if I’m understanding correctly, when the crew comes to blow in the fiber, they will do ring cuts at each handhole to break out 1 or 2 strands. Those cables will terminate at a few larger handholes or manholes with splitters? From there the mainline fiber will go down the highway maybe to the next town. From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Josh Luthman Sent: Monday, August 18, 2025 11:26 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] how is underground FTTH done? A cable comes in 20k feet. Just imagine you place 20k feet along the size of the road. Now you have 10 houses. You put a concrete box between the houses. Inside that concrete box, you leave & open up 50 foot of cable (mid span, ring cut) and then you can see all 144 fibers. 2 houses there so 2 fibers. We take Aqua/Aqua and Aqua/Rose, cut it, and leave it for those 2 houses. At the next concrete box with 2 houses, you're cutting Aqua/Violet and Aqua/Rose. As far as tools, a $1000 splicer does fine. Maybe a $300 if you ask. I have the opinion if your installer is too dumb to splice a fiber, he is too dumb to be in front of your customers. But yes, it is much easier for an installer to plug in an MST - but you are paying for that proprietary connector. On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 12:14 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: OK, that helps. I assume MST avoids every installer having the equipment and training to do fusion splices. But I’m still not understanding in an underground scenario, with a handhole at every passing, what do you splice the drop cable to, and where? Is there a pre installed fiber stub in every handhole for that customer, going back to a splitter at another handhole down the street? From: AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of Josh Luthman Sent: Monday, August 18, 2025 10:40 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] how is underground FTTH done? Splitters are waaay small. Smaller than a standard house key. What you are looking at is an MST terminal, looks like 8 ports. There can be a splitter inside of that yes. You can have the MST with 8 fibers splice to another 8 fibers or you can have what is in your picture have 1 fiber in, split 1x8, and then have 8 ports out for the installers to simply plug in to. If that MST is a 1x8, you can have a 1x4 before it, between the MST and OLT. That makes for OLT -> 1x4 splitter -> 1x8 splitter/MST. That is still a 1x32 split. On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 11:34 AM Ken Hohhof <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: I thought PON used like 16:1 or 32:1 splitters, and in this photo, I assumed that’s what the black boxes were. From: AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of Josh Luthman Sent: Monday, August 18, 2025 10:16 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] how is underground FTTH done? Don't assume that about aerial. That's not how it works. Don't think about it in terms of taps. Generally speaking, installations are PON. What we do is design the fiber so we can hook up 100% of homes. We assign a color to every house. The first thing to think about is that you have to access the individual strand out of the cable, be it 12/24/48/144/etc. That is done with a SpliceCase or you splice on an MST for an ez mode plug. At Imagine we only splice - no connectors, no MST, no plugs, etc. Second thing is that when there's a cable up and down the road, you just need access to it through the case/MST from the house. This can be from the house to the handhole (concrete box in the ground) or you can run it from the house to the handhole through some 1.25" duct to the next handhole where there is one case. I can show you what it looks like if you don't get it yet. On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 11:11 AM Ken Hohhof <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: The fiber train left without me, so maybe someone here can help me understand how the physical installation is typically done. I’ve seen aerial fiber and it’s pretty straightforward, I see splitters up on poles maybe at each intersection, and to hook up a customer, they run a drop wire from the nearest splitter to the house. If take rate is better than expected or a new house is built, worst case I assume they just add a splitter. But I also see FTTH deployments going in where they are boring for duct in the ROW and putting a little handhole in front of every house. How does this work? Are they using taps instead of splitters? If not, when they get a customer install order, do they pull his drop cable through all the handholes to a splitter? That doesn’t seem feasible. Are they dedicating a strand to each house and pulling the main cable out each time and splicing to that strand? And what if they estimate the take rate wrong, or a new house is built? There’s probably a simple explanation and once someone enlightens me it will be a Duh! moment. -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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