Optical fiber is made from silica (drawing glass) and has the diameter of slightly thicker than human hair, which carries light signals from one place to another. Fiber optic cable is made of two or more optical fibers and mainly used for transmission of internet connection.
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The global fibre optic cable market was around $ 34 billion in 2019. The size is expected to drive by various factors such as the ongoing FTTH deployments around the world, demand for fast internet bandwidth, a growing number of devices, technological advancements in fibre optic cable.
The global fibre optic cable market is set to fall by around 6% in 2020, reaching $ 31.9 billion. The falling demand is mainly caused by COVID-19 as lockdown halted production of fibre optic cable in various countries and disrupted projects.
Some of the main players in the fibre optic cable industry include TongDing, FUJIKURA, YOFC, Hengtong, Corning, CommScope, Furukawa, Belden, Finisar, Amphenol, and General Cable.
Fibre optic cable is divided into two main types, single-mode optical fibre and multimode fibre optic cable. Multimode is further divided into step-index multimode and graded-index multimode.
Nowadays, mobile devices, personal computers, smart wearables, and IoT devices all require a fast internet connection. Fixed internet provided through coaxial cable is not enough to facilitate the devices, and so FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) has been introduced to resolve the issue. Fibre optic cable data transfer rate goes up to 10 Gbps, more than enough for all types of devices and users.
Fibre optic cable passes undersea to connect countries and regions. Most states have already deployed their undersea cable to connect, but others are still lagging behind. Facebook, WIOCC, China Mobile International, Vodafone, MTN GlobalConnect, Telecom Egypt, Orange, and STC have recently joined hands to develop subsea cable in Africa and the Middle East.
Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) is appointed for 2Africa project to deploy nearly 37,000km cable to connect Europe, Middle East and Africa. The cable capacity is around 180Tbps.