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Fibre optic network technology provider Relativity Networks has entered into a strategic partnership with UK-based Network Planning Solutions (NPS), an international provider of fibre installation and support services, in order to support commercial deployments of Hollow-Core Fibre (HCF) cables and infrastructure.
Conventional single mode optical fibre cables work by guiding laser light through solid glass (silica) cores, which need to be extremely transparent in order to avoid signal loss. But even the clearest of fibres can still suffer a slight loss over distance and researchers have thus long been refining a possible alternative for the future – HCF.
HCF cables have an air-filled central core (i.e. light travels faster through the air than glass), with an outer ring of glass to help guide the beam, which helps to resolve some of the aforementioned issues – improving latency, reducing signal loss and potentially also boosting data speeds a bit too. But refining this technology for commercial deployment has taken a bit of time.
The new partnership being announced above will see Relativity Networks’ patented HCF cable benefitting from having NPS as the inaugural member of their Trusted Installation Partner (TIP) program. Under this program, Relativity Networks closely collaborates with installation companies to train them in the specifics of deploying their HCF technology.
As part of the partnership, Relativity Networks and NPS have worked through hundreds of splices of the company’s fibre, applying the latest methods including rotational alignment and interferometer inspection of cleaves. These efforts are a critical aspect of commercialisation, demonstrating to customers how HCF can be deployed and seamlessly integrated into their existing infrastructure.
Daniel Preston, CEO of NPS, said:
“We are excited to bring our international expertise to Relativity Networks and its customers. By working together, we can meet the most demanding needs of digital infrastructure customers and help them realise the significant benefits of hollow-core fibre.”
Jason Eichenholz, CEO and Founder of Relativity Networks, said:
“Everyone in the industry is struggling to understand how to integrate something new into their ecosystem. There are many questions about HCF and how it connects to existing systems. We are addressing this by having a trusted installation partner like NPS, that has significant experience installing HCF across multiple installations and is an important part of Relativity’s ecosystem, which includes everything from fiber to cabling to connecterization to network design. NPS is our boots on the ground for our final phase of installation for our customers, offering a streamlined and reliable path as the industry moves toward a new era in optical communications.”
However, it’s important to caveat that HCF cables aren’t going to be used to replace all of today’s optical fibres – at least not for many decades (if ever). The reason for this is that, firstly, we aren’t even close to maximising the capability of existing solid core fibres. The improvements that HCF brings also lend itself more to ultra-low latency environments, such as connectivity for High Frequency Trading (HFT) over long distances or Data Centres etc.