News Releases

Fiber optic cables outshine copper for local business

California-based firm Wave2Wave opened a Dayton-area sales and distribution office in January.
By Jim DeBrosse
Staff Writer Dayton Daily News
Wednesday, June 06, 2007 Dayton Daily News

WASHINGTON TWP., Montgomery County — Fiber optic cables — composed of tiny strands of clear glass no thicker than a human hair — can carry 1,000 times more signal than copper cable over 100 times the distance.

Fiber is lighter, cheaper and stronger than copper, too, all reasons why Wave2Wave Solution Corp., a California-based custom cable firm that recently opened a sales office and distribution center here, says it's ready to help local businesses join the growing switch to fiber optics.

"There is a lot of excitement now" in the cabling and electronics industry, said David Wang, founder and chief executive of Wave2Wave.

A recent article in the industry trade magazine Lightwave predicted that fiber optic cable sales will exceed copper for the first time in 2008.

Since opening offices here in January, Wave2Wave has five sales people and a warehouse partnership with Dalco Electronics in Springboro. Wang said his company, which he founded nearly four years ago in Santa Clara, Calif., has national accounts with Yahoo! and Cisco.

Wave2Wave imports its fiber optic cabling from China, Wang said.

Technicians in the cabling field remember the fiber optic boom of the 1980s and 1990s that crashed with the downfall of the dot-com industry in 2001. Sales of fiber links plunged by 50 percent, said Jim Hayes, president of The Fiber Optic Association, a professional society for cabling installers.

But trends over the past two years, including the skyrocketing cost of copper, have made fiber optics attractive again despite its slightly higher installation costs, Hayes said. Nearly all "backbone" cabling — the major trunk lines for phone companies, cable TV firms and Internet service providers — is now fiber optic because of the need for higher speeds and greater bandwidth, Hayes said.

More complicated is whether homes and local businesses should choose fiber or copper, he said.

Wiring a new home with fiber optics costs about $900 — or about $200 more than copper, Hayes said. But the advantage is "virtually infinite" bandwidth for handling computers, phones, home theaters or any other digital delivery service a homeowner could desire far into the foreseeable future.

The other advantage, especially for large phone and Internet service providers, is the lower maintenance costs for fiber, which is far more reliable in the signal it delivers, he said.

Businesses that transfer large amounts of data, or use robotics in their manufacturing process, can benefit from the higher speeds and capacity of fiber optics as well, Hayes said.

The combination of high-tech firms and manufacturing plants is one reason Wave2Wave was drawn to the Dayton area, Wang said. "We see lots and lots of need here."