To make it all work, Thus there is a huge demand for the new fiber optic cable that holds twice as many fiber pairs; two strands, uplink, and one for the downlink-as the old cable.
In every cable are the glass fibers, which are unspooled with a device known as a payoff system. In the cable factory, these machines are enormous –6 feet tall, 25 feet long, and 4 ft wide. Color coding allows technicians to know which components to splice when linking two wires. When displayed on giant bobbins in the cable factory, the fibers produce an unintentional artist’s palette of yellow, coral, aqua, forest green, and gray. The glass fibers are then laced through weather-resistant buffer tubes and swaddled in strong synthetic aramid yarn to safeguard the inner workings. The final step of production entails applying a dark sheath made from durable polyethylene. A finished fiber-optic cable can be up to 30,000 feet or more than 5 miles.
These wires could be draped along utility poles or concealed in shallow trenches beneath city streets out on earth. Enormous spans of cable carry the net under the oceans between continents. In those areas, mostly hidden, they may one day connect your 5G-enabled apparatus and beam you into the future. 5G Is Coming, and It will be fortified with optical fiber, countless new wireless transmitters will relay all that data to your phone, and many will connect to the internet through endless miles of new fiber-optic cable.