Splicing Fiber Optic Cable « Time Warner Cable Untangled

Jul 29 2010

Splicing Fiber Optic Cable

A little while back, I posted about the differences between coaxial and fiber-optic cable. One of our folks out in Southern California saw the post and brought this to my attention: a video of one of our technicians demonstrating how we splice fiber optic cable when it’s gotten cut or broken. I thought it was pretty interesting, maybe you will, too. Note that the embedded video is TINY here, too — click to see the video in full size here.

I really have fun figuring out how cable works and where it comes from, and I’m learning a lot by digging all this stuff up. If there’s some aspect of this technology that you’d like to learn about, please let me know in the comments.

Categories: Broadband Penetration/Deployment, Cool Stuff, How-To, What's New

4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Splicing Fiber Optic Cable”

Kyle Reilly
Jul 30, 2010
at 12:55 am

Interesting to Watch.
Christy
Jul 30, 2010
at 10:16 am

Great video! I worked for a cable company for almost 7 years and never got the chance to watch them splice fiber optic cable. Good to see it now!
John Bramfeld
Aug 03, 2010
at 3:52 pm

I am looking for a video that shows something other than a guy put two wires in a machine which magically splices the cable. I bet somewhere out there someone has figured out a manual method.

I have an idea for a cooking show. A guy pours flour, yeast and water into a machine, turns it on, and bread comes out.
Jeff Simmermon
Aug 03, 2010
at 6:16 pm

@John – It’s my understanding that the machine applies intense heat to a form mold that causes the glass to melt together. That’s what fiber-optic cable is, glass. The “manual method” would involve a Zippo, or a magnifying glass and a sunny day — and there’s no guarantee that the data would be able to travel through that kind of a “fix.” Plus, there are hundreds of those hairlike cables in one thick inground cable casing. If there’s a fiber cut, each one of those has to be matched up to the right partner half — it already takes a long time, doing it manually would take even longer.