FutureFLEX® Air-Blown Fiber® - The Green Cabling Solution

The World’s Only Reusable & Renewable Environmentally Friendly Optical Fiber System with no End to the Fiber Life Cycle

• It’s the only optical fiber system with immediately reusable fiber
• It’s the only fiber system through which fiber can be immediately recycled back into the network again and again
• It’s a fiber pathway that is installed only once and reused over and over, yielding less physical infrastructure and the elimination or significant reduction of PVC conduit, innerduct, pull boxes, and associated costs
• It’s non-disruptive, eliminating traditional cabling construction work and associated dark fiber and material waste for network fiber upgrades, reconfigurations, expansions and any moves, adds, and changes
• It’s environmentally safe, eliminating the removal of ceiling tiles and other disruptions to the interior and external buildings that pose hazards, such as asbestos and airborne pathogens for the preservation of internal air quality
• It’s a quick and easy fiber installation system that requires only 2 installers versus traditionally large work crews, resulting in the minimization of the carbon footprint in number of trucks, fewer days on the job, less contractor call-backs, and much less financial outlay (typically 70-90% less in time and labor costs)
• It’s the system that resolves abandoned cable issues
• It’s a system with materials that meet RoHS standards to be free of lead, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and mercury, as well as offerings of non-PVC and zero halogen tube cables
• It’s the solution for the creation of a truly sustainable, real-time network with no end to the fiber life cycle

These are just some of the many ways that FutureFLEX Air-Blown Fiber can help you achieve your personal vision for environmental responsibility or possibly impact your LEED credits.  Although there are no official LEED credits specifically for structured cabling, you can review the FutureFLEX green attributes with your US Green Building Council representative for possible credits, especially in the Innovation & Design category. At Sumitomo, we take environmental stewardship seriously and are pleased to offer FutureFLEX Air-Blown Fiber, the only existing technology for the creation of a truly environmentally sustainable network.

Air-Blown Fiber and Sustainability

One of the best-known definitions of sustainability or sustainable development is the definition by the World Commission on Environment and Development, which communicates that sustainability is "forms of progress that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs." Another definition of sustainability in recent years refers to how long human systems can be expected to be usefully productive. Considering both definitions of sustainability, it can be said that a usefully productive system depends upon the degree of scalability and future proofing capabilities of that system.

Given the above definitions of sustainability, Air-Blown Fiber technology provides a sustainable means of fiber installation and a continuously renewable and sustainable fiber optic network infrastructure:

• By blowing in and blowing out fiber as needed in real-time, the Air-blown Fiber system is immediately scalable providing a true future-proofed fiber optic infrastructure for the IT network.
• Unlike traditional fiber optic cabling methods in which predetermined fiber types and counts are laid with a limited life cycle for useful productivity before the costly and labor-intensive fiber installation process must be repeated, the Air-blown Fiber system is continually renewable and productive with no end to the fiber life cycle, since fiber types and counts can be quickly and easily replaced, reused, and interchanged on demand.
• As it relates to LEED sustainability criteria, the elimination of construction work and the need to re-enter conduit for both indoor and outdoor network MACs makes the Air-blown Fiber system conducive for conserving natural areas and the habitat, minimizing site disruption, controlling airborne dust generation, and minimizing the footprint for disruption of environmentally sensitive areas.