From smart buildings to smart cities, fiber and power are key network elements
The telecom industry is in the midst of a monumental shift toward an all-encompassing 5G standard that will enable exciting industrial and enterprise applications. But, as this evolution continues, it has become clear that, as is the case now, access to fiber and power will be key to the future.
That’s the point Corning representatives hit again and again during CTIA Super Mobility 2016: enterprises can make their IT infrastructure flexible and future-proof by strategically investing in fiber and power.
The current pinch point for both building owners and operators is in-building cellular. Facing limited capex, carriers simply can’t invest in DAS or other solutions for every building that would benefit better connectivity. That reality leaves it up to enterprises and commercial real estate owners to provide what Keith Martin, director of sales for Corning Optical Communications, called “the fourth utility—fiber.”
He explained to RCR Wireless News on the sidelines of CTIA that, at first, fiber was the network backbone. Then fiber was run to buildings, then up risers, and, “Now we see it traversing the horizontal in the buildings. Just like plumbing a building, you don’t ever want to go back and put new pipes in. It’s the same way with information technology. You want to put that layer one architecture in. You want to have enough power, and you want to have enough fiber to suit you for 20 to 25 years without having to go back and pull extra cable over.”
As enterprises of all sizes and resource levels undertake digital transformation—harnessing the power of cloud computing and big data to unlock business insights that create new efficiencies and revenue opportunities—bandwidth cannot be a limiting factor.
Consider a distributed antenna system, which Martin described as a great solution for solving problems with cellular connectivity, albeit with a “single-purpose appliance. It doesn’t really do a lot of other things for the enterprise.” A DAS, he said, “doesn’t give them cost-effective bandwidth to the end user, which is really what a DAS is trying to solve. So, by us really focusing on a fiber and power infrastructure that can have interchangeable parts at the edge, we feel like we take the limitations off an enterprise. We give them virtually unlimited bandwidth to the edge of their networks in a very cost-effective way.”
Martin summed up his message: Given the rapid developments around 5G and IoT, it’s clear that change is coming. Fiber allows enterprise customers “to be agnostic to whatever edge appliances they’re going to be using in the future and scale, be flexible. We want to deliver them something that can scale for 25 years, for whatever they’re building or their enterprise is going to need for the future.”
To see more from Corning from CTIA, check out this playlist. And, to learn more about Corning’s wireless solutions, click here.
