THE MECHANICAL OPTICAL FIBER SPLICE FOR THE 1990S

Splicing of optical fibers will be a major determining factor in the technical and economic success of fiber networks built in the 1990s. Needs, requirements, and specifications are now being proposed for the splicing systems to be used in these future networks. Two basic objectives for the splicing system of the 1990s can be defined from all the study and analysis that has been done thus far. Simply stated, the most widely accepted splicing system for the future will be the one that provides the highest performance at the lowest installed cost. A new splicing system has been developed that addresses and meets many of the requirements that have been proposed. This system provides high splice performance and at the same time is very easy and fast to use. It also has low-cost assembly tooling and has been exhaustively tested to ensure conformance with proposed performance specifications. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.