FutureFLEX® Air-Blown Fiber® Pathway

A Revolutionary Fiber Pathway System

• It’s much more than the world’s fastest and most advanced fiber installation system
• It’s also a fiber pathway that replaces conduit and innerduct for virtually unlimited fiber, bandwidth and pathway capacity
• It’s a fiber pathway that is installed only once and reused over and over again
• It’s a pathway infrastructure system that facilitates a splice-free, continuous fiber run
• It’s a truly flexible pathway that yields less physical infrastructure, facilitates value engineering, and saves significant time and cost
• It’s the solution for filled conduit and duct banks…plus much more

Creating the FutureFLEX Fiber Pathway

At the heart of the FutureFLEX Air-blown Fiber System is an infrastructure of tube cable in a wide variety of outdoor and indoor riser and plenum rated options that forms the intra-building and in-building LAN topology or fiber pathway. The non-PVC tube cable contains up to 19 smaller empty tubes and can be either direct buried in the outside plant to replace both traditional conduit and innerduct, eliminating two labor intensive installation steps for upfront infrastructure cost savings. The tube cable, however, is also flexible enough to be placed in an existing conduit pathway, giving you various value-engineering options.

Unlike traditional cabling systems, the laying of the tube cable is the only occurrence of physical disruption to your facility and/or its grounds. The installation of the tube cable pathway also eliminates the pull points every 100 to 200 feet required by conventional cabling systems, thereby reducing or eliminating labor intensive work in manholes for a pathway installation that is easier, faster, and less disruptive.

Installing the FutureFLEX Pathway Only Once for Virtually Unlimited Fiber and Bandwidth

Here is why the FutureFLEX fiber pathway has earned the recognition of being revolutionary, if not amazing. To illustrate the extent of capacity provided by the FutureFLEX tube cable, consider that a total of only 3 1-1/4 inch innerducts, through which conventional fiber optic cable is pulled, yield only 3 pathways in a standard 4-inch conduit. In that same 4-inch conduit, 2 FutureFLEX 19- tube cables yield 38 pathways. Even if a fabric innerduct is used, which fits 9 conventional fiber optic cables that yield 9 pathways, FutureFLEX tube cable still provides a 322% increase in capacity within the same space, resolving your congested conduit and duct bank problems and ensuring the likelihood of you never having to lay additional conduit again.

Because of its virtually unlimited pathway space, the FutureFLEX tube cable infrastructure provides the capacity for nearly unlimited optical fiber and bandwidth. The same tube cable pathway through which any fiber type and counts required can be quickly blown in and out in a splice-free, continuous fiber run is reused time and time again, eliminating the traditional cabling requirement of adding additional conduit when either more fiber, more bandwidth, or a new type of fiber is needed. FutureFLEX also eliminates the need to re-enter the pathway or conduit system as is necessary with conventional cabling. A few spare tubes within the tube cable are always left empty for future expansion, truly future proofing your network in real-time and eliminating the need and investment in dark fiber immediately giving you the fiber and bandwidth when and where you need it. Just blow in the fiber in minutes…and you’re done.

Less Infrastructure and Value Engineering Yield Significant Savings in Time and Cost

Since tube cables are joined in tube distribution units (TDUs) using easy push-fit connectors, FutureFLEX offers a modular infrastructure solution that can quickly devise different pathway configurations not easily or cost effectively accomplished with traditional cabling.

To reduce costs and improve efficiency, the FutureFLEX tube cable pathway can be reconfigured to support multiple topologies, such as ring, hierarchical star and others simultaneously, integrating systems from HVAC, physical security, to communications and more under one common backbone giving engineers value added flexibility in imagination and design. To further illustrate the versatility provided by the tube cable pathway and TDUs, consider that your campus is adding a building to your existing network, which would require a conventional cabling system to install and pull conduit first, then innerduct, from the new building to wherever the central data hub or communications room is housed. Then, a crew of installers must again pull the fiber optic cable that same long distance from the new building to the central location.

With FutureFLEX, tube cable needs to be extended only from the local or closest TDU to the new building with fiber blown back in minutes to the fiber termination unit in the central data hub. That means a lot less physical infrastructure, which can amount to astronomical savings in installation time, materials, and overall pathway infrastructure costs. Just another way FutureFLEX resolves the limitations of old, existing technology to bring you the innovations of the 21st Century network.