Design Improvements Enhance AFL's FDH Cabinet

19/07/2007

Spartanburg, SC - AFL announces a newly designed enclosure system for the Fiber Distribution Hub (FDH). The weakness with current FDH models is that they utilize a single-door access approach.  AFL's new design provides a dual-door approach. One door opens from the front, and the other opens from the side.  This allows for full access to all key fiber terminations, routing and components from the front of the hub.

“Our goal was to make it faster and easier for a technician to turn-up new subscribers,” stated Tony Nieves, OSP product manager for AFL. “With traditional cabinet designs, technicians must reach inside the cabinet to work, but AFL’s new design enables them to work from the front of the cabinet – a convex design verses the more traditional concave design.”

The AFL FDH was created as a full modular platform. Not only can optical splitter modules be added at a later date, but distribution fields can also be added later as they are needed. This allows the service provider to pay for only the distribution capacity currently needed while allowing space for growth when subscriber density increases. In addition, the design of the door seal provides added protection for harsh environments.

As a fully-owned division of Fujikura, AFL is able to integrate optical technology developed in Japan and make it available to the U.S. market.

“The use of Fujikura’s Bend Insensitive fiber allowed our engineers to design a much smaller FDH cabinet and still maintain excellent fiber management and proper bend radius protection,” adds Nieves.

The AFL FDH is currently available in two versions – a 288-fiber count and 432-fiber count, and both are configurable in either pole or pad mounting. AFL expects to release a new 864-fiber count cabinet utilizing the same unique dual-door design and optical splitter module, which will allow the service provide to maintain inventory of only one splitter module to service all three enclosures.

For additional information, visit www.AFLglobal.com.

About AFL
 AFL is an industry leader in providing fiber optic products, engineering expertise and integrated services to the Electric Utility, Broadband, Telco, OEM, Private Network and Wireless markets. It has operations in the U.S., Mexico and the U.K.  AFL is a division of Fujikura Ltd. of Japan.