Optical fibre is undoubtedly growing in popularity, and its use will continue to grow as fibre infrastructure projects, such as the National Broadband Network (NBN), find their place in the Australian market.

A primary reason for its popularity is that optical fibre can carry many more services and much greater throughput than traditional copper cabling. For this reason one fibre optic cable can be used in installations that would typically require several copper counterparts.

The downside is that as more services are being carried over a single cable, any downtime or outages can cost a company tens of thousands of dollars per second in lost revenue for each cord damaged.

That’s why good fibre optic protection is essential. Fibre cables are fragile and need to be protected throughout any cabling installation, from beginning to end. Traditional cable sitting on open cable trays and ladders, for example, can cause damage to the delicate fibre cables. So these methods of routing cables provide no protection for exposed fibre.

Rather, fibre needs to be segregated from all copper cables and routed in enclosed ducting, clearly defined by means of a bright, distinctive colour. They also need protection against compression and the minimum bend radius, generally specified as 30mm, must not be compromised.

Warren & Brown’s YellowDuct fibre optic ducting raceway is a unique system for routing and protecting fibre optic cords between termination equipment, patch panels and fibre optic splicing cabinets or frames in telecommunications exchanges, data centres, universities, hospitals or anywhere fibre optic cabling is present.

YellowDuct is available in six sizes, in solid wall or slotted wall varieties for exiting fibres and has a large range of connecting components and mounting hardware available.

YellowDuct components simply snap together or can be joined with ‘slotles’” joiners. Vertical drops can be positioned or added easily by adding a cut-out in the horizontal raceway with a simple-to-operate hand tool.

All components in the YellowDuct system are manufactured from Noryl, a very strong plastic, which is self extinguishing and halogen free, which means in the case of a fire the gases emitted will not cause harm to personnel, buildings or transmission equipment.