Prysmian's blown fibre system breezes past 1million fibre kilometres

Prysmian Telecom Cables & Systems announces that it has reached the "1million installed Fibre Km" mark for its Sirocco®, Blown Fibre System, maintaining its position as the leading global supplier of the technology, traditionally deployed in access networks.

The principle of blown fibre involves the pre-installation of an empty tube network into which optical fibres are subsequently blown - using compressed air - as the network evolves under the demand for customer connection.

With the current trend towards higher speed, higher bandwidth services and the resulting need to bring the optical fibres in a telecom network closer to the final end-user, the Sirocco® system provides an ideal and cost effective way to achieve this. It is particularly well suited to greenfield residential sites where an empty tube infrastructure can be included at the time of construction with the fibre investment deferred until actual consumer demand occurs.

Sirocco®, produced at Prysmian's UK facility in Bishopstoke, has now been supplied around the world to more than 20 countries in all 5 continents with the landmark project taking place last month in Denmark. The system includes everything required to build a complete passive network - all tubing, fibres, joints and connectors together with specialist installation equipment and engineering services. The optical fibres - also produced by Prysmian - are blown into the tubes in units of 2, 4, 6 (new product), 8 or 12 with the new CasaLightTM family of bend-insensitive fibres being fully available and compatible with Sirocco technology .

Prysmian
A leading player in the industry of high-technology cables and systems for energy and telecommunication, the Prysmian Group is a truly global company with sales exceeding 5 billion euro in 2007 and a strong position in higher-added value market segments. With its two business, Energy Cables & Systems (submarine and underground cables for power transmission and distribution, for industrial applications and for the distribution of electricity to residential and commercial buildings) and Telecom Cables & Systems (optical cables and fibres and copper cables for video, data and voice transmission), Prysmian boasts a global presence with subsidiaries in 36 countries, 54 plants in 21 countries, 7 Research & Development Centres in Europe, USA and South America, and over 12,000 employees. Specialising in the development of products and systems designed to meet clients' specific requirements, Prysmian's key strengths include: a focus on Research & Development, the capacity to innovative on products and production processes, and the use of advanced proprietary technologies. Prysmian is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange Blue Chip index