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Colchester’s UK Dark Fibre Network Benefits from New High Density Cable

Monday, Jun 20th, 2022 (10:32 am) - Score 1,784
Prysmian-Group-Sirocco-HD-Cable

The Colchester Borough Council‘s recent multi-million pound project to build a new Dark Fibre network across the Essex town (here) appears to have also been one of the first places in the UK to deploy the Prysmian Group’s latest Sirocco HD cable, which can fit 552 fibres into a diameter of just 8.2mm.

High density microduct cables are nothing new, but every few years’ somebody finds a way to make them even smaller, lighter and more flexible or durable. Not so long ago we were talking about Fujikura’s SpiderWeb Ribbon (SWR) cable, which could fit 288 fibres into a cable diameter of 11.7mm – rising up to 1728 fibres into 22.1mm.

According to Colm Coyle, MD of Rio IT and designer of the installation, the company needed to find a cable that could be inserted into the existing duct system (this had originally been built to support CCTV cameras) and which would be reasonably future-proof. In short, they needed to squeeze around 500 individual fibres into a 16mm diameter duct (they actually only had 9-11mm of usable space inside the tube).

Colm says that Prysmian’s cable was the only one they could find for their particular job, and it’s about a quarter of the weight of other cables of a similar capacity. The operator specified 26 kilometres of 552 Sirocco HD fibre cable for the project, supplied by Fusion Utilities, to be installed by Scotech in a ring around the city. The cable is made up of 552 individual G657A2 fibres, with a fibre density of up to 10.5 fibres per mm2.

The cable also utilizes Prysmian’s BendBright-A2 200µm single-mode (ITU-T G.657.A2) bend insensitive fibre technology, allowing it to retain enough flexibility to be bent around tight corners without being damaged. This is important because the new cable had to be blown down the duct at a high enough air pressure that it could make it around 21 right angle bends.

The first blow was 1200m – from the town hall, around eight bends, followed by three 1000m blows. The longest ‘directional blow’ of the whole project was 1650m, with the longest overall section length reaching 2170m, or over two kilometres. Thankfully, the installation was completed with minimal disruption to the community, with no road works or loud maintenance being required.

Adrian Austin, UK Sales Manager for Telecom at Prysmian Group UK, said:

“This was a significant project for Prysmian as it required the use of a brand-new product, which was successfully installed with no issues. Further to this, Colchester is now just the second area in the UK to have this system installed, and Colchester City Council, who commissioned the project, is delighted.”

We don’t often write much about the optical fibre cables themselves, preferring instead to focus on the service delivered, network coverage and networking equipment involved at the ONT or OLT. But this one was interesting and detailed enough to be worthy of a mention.

The project was completed in December 2021 and has helped to form some of the foundation for VXFIBER‘s (inc. subsidiary LilaConnect) ongoing project to rollout a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the town (here).

As a side note, the Prysmian Group has said that their latest Sirocco HD cable variant can fit 576 fibres into a diameter of 9.5mm, providing a fibre density of 8.1 fibres per mm2.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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Comments
11 Responses
  1. Avatar photo Matt says:

    Impressive density. Would hate to deal with repairing it in the event of a break!

    1. Avatar photo An Engineer says:

      Insane isn’t it?

      The cables themselves have come a very long way. The old 288f cables seem massive by comparison.

    2. Avatar photo Well Well says:

      @An Engineer – I hear Simon/Anon already has his leased line deployed over it.

    3. Avatar photo An Engineer says:

      Which one Well Well? The TalkTalk Business one, the Daisy one or the BT one?

    4. Avatar photo Well Well says:

      @An Engineer – Hasn’t he told you yet? one leased line for each fibre in the cable, I make that 552 so TalkTalk Business, Daisy and BT must all be in there somewhere.

    5. Avatar photo Colm Coyle says:

      Hi Matt – break repairs on any high density fibre are always a nightmare – especially when you have used blown fibre into sub duct tubes.

      It is almost impossible to have maintenance loops available to provide spare fibre when you consider the fibre lengths and the number of bends involved (initial fibre blow has supporting air pressure and lots of lubrication gel to help fibre movement).

      In reality, you have to go back and forward to nearest manholes and splice in a new fibre section. The slight saving grace is that we always hold stock of spare fibre and small high density splice torpedos, and we use 12 core “ribbon” splicing – so can splice at around 6 times the speed of single core splicing.

      The fibres themselves are not ribbon fibres – we insert them into a ‘ribbonising tool’ that gets them in the right colour order and holds them in a precise position matching that of a proper ribbon fibre.

      It is also complicated further by the fact that most downstream fibre are 250 micron diameter cores but the Prysmian cores are 200 micron – so you are splicing different core sizes. That 200 micron size is 65% the size and weight of a normal 250 micro cable, and the Prysmian fibre also has 23 tubs with 24 fibres each and a central strength member, as opposed to a normal 576 core fibre which will typically have 24 tubes and 2 strength members in the jacket.

      The combination of thinner fibre, 1 less tube and a single strength member is what gets the size so small and weight down. We can handle a minimum bend radius of 100mm, while a normal 576 core fibre will be closer to 200mm bend radius. Prysmian are clever!!!

  2. Avatar photo Small Business says:

    So how do I go about renting a fibre from one end of Colchester to another? Or is this taxpayer funded network only available to “special friends” of the council?

    1. Avatar photo Colm Coyle says:

      Hi “Small Business” – the fibre network deployed to date focuses on the Colchester Town Center network area, where it has been deployed in the old CCTV ducts. A second phase is also being completed in coming months which will deploy a Metronet ring from the Town Centre zone up to the Severalls Business Park / Northern Gateway area in a loop, with just over 40 interconnect cabinets along the way. That will also allow links from the Town Centre to a second resilient dark fibre link to Telehouse. These links are DWDM circuits, with multiple 10 GBit channels, so can each provide up to 400 GBits or more of backhaul to the Internet. If you contact me directly on colm.coyle@rioit.co.uk or call me on 01206 235010 I can advise on your options for fibre connectivity in Colchester – there are more options than might be obvious. Thanks, Colm Coyle

  3. Avatar photo Marcos Gilson says:

    Colchester is a City not a Town

  4. Avatar photo Ian says:

    Using VX Fibre to install broadband in Colchester is the hardest and most expensive way of rolling this out using Openreach would have been a much better and faster option not a surprise I guess for anyone knowing the council here

    1. Avatar photo Colm Coyle says:

      Hi Ian.

      To be clear, VX are one service provider on the Colchester system and are independent of Colchester Council. Their network deployment is currently focusing on the area to the South of the town centre.

      One part of the decision by the council to invest in a fibre backbone for the town and surrounding areas was driven by the fact that broadband speeds around the town centre area in particular are very, very low – most copper lines there are exchange direct so cannot get FTTC.

      Openreach do not seem to be in any hurry to deploy fibre services anywhere in Colchester (I live here – I know!!!!) – except of course if I want a leased line on a 3 year term.

      The additional Metronet ring will provide 40+ interconnect points to the high density residential / commercial areas to the North of the town area, making it viable for commercial service providers to deploy FTTH to these zones and get access to unlimited resilient backhaul to Tehehouse.

      These will also support the backhaul needs of 5g deployments as they come on stream in future.

      The Council are also steadily using 60 GHz radio system to deploy Gigabit links where fibre drops are not feasible or too expensive.

      While it is easy to be critical of any Council, I know that Colchester are way out in front of 99% of other local councils in the UK. They took the problem seriously, went after the funding, got it from Central Government and have delivered the project pretty much to completion at this stage – the final cabling links are scheduled for completion within the next 3 months.

      How many Councils can offer a large chunk of their local businesses 10 GBit internet links with dual resilient backhaul pipes at a very attractive price?

      If you are local and need to know more about connectivity options, please email me on colm.coyle@rioit.co.uk or call on 01206 235010 – thanks, Colm

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