ACOME Claims to Slash Fibre Optic Cable Waste via New System

Fibre manufacturer ACOME Group has today announced the introduction of a new platform that they claim could help broadband operators to reduce the amount of expensive optical fibre cable network builders throw away each year. All you need is a QR code and an App that combine to keep a record of each cable drum and its usage.

The manufacturer claims that, every day, broadband companies “waste on average 10% of the full fibre cable they deploy” owing to a lack of knowledge of how much cable they have available in stock or on the field. The solution they came up for helping to solve this is called QR-Drum, which assigns a QR code to each cable drum to work as its digital twin (this keeps a record of cable lengths – down to the last metre, locations [cloud-based GPS tracking] and deployment history).

According to ACOME, this approach allows for a much more efficient fibre management, “cutting fibre cable waste by half or more, and saving up to 5% on cable costs“. The platform is compatible with any manufacturers’ cable-drum and caters to two types of users. Users ‘in the field’ have a mobile app to deploy and record data, and those managing stock use the desktop dashboard to monitor availability and waste in real time – taking some of the guesswork out of things.

ACOME’s QR Drum Product Manager, Delphine Dépont, said:

“Faced with higher interest rates, a need to cut costs and improve deployment efficiency, QR-Drum has been launched by ACOME Group to address a common industry issue of a lack of visibility on available cable lengths leading to overstocking issues. Reducing all forms of waste is a key element in any sustainability strategy. By limiting waste and landfill, the QR-Drum solution will help improve the environmental profile of the broadband sector.

The inability to track exact remaining cable lengths and the inordinate amount of time spent on inventories and logistics tracking, has long been a hindering factor in operational and cost efficiency in our industry.”

The new platform sounds like something that might be more useful for larger network operators, although a lot of providers already have reasonably good systems of their own in place for tracking cable usage. But clearly any new solutions that can help to minimise such issues are always welcome.