Fiber Optic Cable Industry Competitiveness Needs Enhancement
According to reports on March 21, although China's fiber optic cable technology has made significant progress in recent years, with some proprietary technologies already playing a role, it should be noted that this proportion remains very small. There are nearly 200 fiber optic cable manufacturers in China, but most produce a single product line, lack proprietary intellectual property, have low technological content, and weak competitiveness. At the "2011 China Optical Network City Development Strategy High-Level Forum" held on March 1, Zhang Jiping, Deputy General Manager of China Telecom, pointed out: "By the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period, we hope to achieve full fiber coverage for households and enterprise/government users in southern urban areas, with fiber access ports and terminal numbers exceeding 100 million, achieving the world's number one fiber access development goal."
1. Actively Innovate and Develop New Patents with Proprietary Intellectual Property
As the world's second-largest optical cable country, we should make the development of proprietary intellectual property technologies our top priority and strive to create more fiber optic cable patents. "Fiber optic cable production costs have risen while sales revenue has declined significantly." Regarding the current status of the fiber optic cable sector, which is important for broadband construction, Wang Yingming, Chief Engineer of Hengtong Optic-Electric Co., Ltd., stated that the current appreciation pressure on the RMB, fluctuations in the Middle East situation, rising oil prices, significantly increased fiber optic cable material costs, and relatively low prices of imported foreign fiber all make competition in the fiber optic cable market increasingly fierce. "With the in-depth development of optical network city construction, the fiber optic cable industry will continue to expand." Although Wang Yingming is very optimistic about the promotion of the fiber optic cable industry by optical network cities, he pointed out that to make China a strong fiber optic cable production country, it is necessary to leverage the power of the communications industry association, improve the production work of fiber optic cable manufacturers, and enable better development of optical networks.
The continuous development of telecommunications networks also places new demands on optical cable and wire products. It is not difficult to see that the structure of optical cables increasingly depends on the environmental conditions of application and specific construction requirements. This is deeply felt in the development of submarine optical cables, shallow-water optical cables, ADSS and OPGW optical cables. In the future, the focus of optical cable construction will continue to expand with the construction of access networks and customer premises networks. New generations of optical cable structures and construction techniques will also undergo a series of new changes based on complete technology sets such as micro optical cables, blown or floating installation, and mini micro-duct or small-duct systems, so that limited installation space can be fully and flexibly utilized. This also includes several new technical topics in optical cable design, manufacturing processes, fiber optic cable materials, and construction installation. Some countries or companies have already gained experience and are gradually forming new system technology patents. China has a large number of users, and access networks and customer premises networks have many distinctive features, placing more requirements on access optical cables, providing excellent opportunities for us to research and innovate in access network and customer premises network optical cable structures. It should be said that most of our optical cable technology follows the latest foreign technology. Although we keep pace with advanced technology, there is too little self-innovation. In the future, we should make efforts in this area and follow our own path of innovation. In access networks and customer premises networks with Chinese characteristics, we should adopt more optical cable and wire products with Chinese characteristics.
2. Utilize Existing Equipment and Technologies
For already-deployed copper cables, we can only make the best use of their characteristics under existing conditions to open up new digital services. Although existing HYA cables can also support new services such as ADSL, their capacity is limited. When the number of ADSL lines increases to a certain limit, interference problems will still occur, and it will also affect previously opened services. Therefore, for newly deployed copper cables, it is hoped that new broadband performance requirements can be proposed to prepare for opening more and better new services in the future. Existing local telephone cable manufacturers should conduct in-depth research on their own production processes, carefully design and meticulously manufacture without modifying (or significantly modifying) production equipment, and raise the technical level of existing cables to a higher grade, providing wider-bandwidth cables and high-quality channels for developing more and better digital services.
3. Improve Construction and Maintenance Methods for Optical and Copper Cables
Currently, to adapt to the characteristics of urban construction, the international community places greater emphasis on trenchless methods for installing optical and copper cables, using small-trench or micro-trench technologies for cable installation, while implementing automatic detection of optical cable networks to ensure uninterrupted communication maintenance. Correspondingly, it is necessary to develop matching components, tools, and equipment, and to make institutional improvements to adapt accordingly. ITU places great importance on the development of water immersion sensors for optical cables by NH, fiber selectors for automatic fiber testing, the 1-second alarm and 3-minute positioning target proposed by the United States, and the comprehensive monitoring scheme for fiber cores and cable sheaths proposed by Italy. In modern optical networks, these methods have already played a significant role. It is evident that to ensure the reliability of optical cable network operations, it is imperative to reduce costs, save labor, save time in construction and maintenance, gradually promote new construction methods, gradually improve automatic monitoring and maintenance systems for optical cable networks, and enhance the level of uninterrupted maintenance of optical cable networks.
4. Current Development of the Telecommunications Market Promotes the Growth of the Fiber Optic Cable and Communication Cable Industries
The market trend of fiber optic cables and communication cables is closely related to the development of the entire telecommunications industry. It should be noted that after the vigorous rise of 3G network construction, with the expansion of fiber optic networks from backbone network expansion to access networks, metropolitan area networks, and continuous extension to customer premises networks, the market for fiber optic cables and broadband digital cables will inevitably grow. The global fiber optic market will begin to see significant growth.
It should be recognized that the information and communication industry is a sunrise industry full of vitality and vigor. The network economy has strong vitality. The development of information technology and network technology remains the main driving force for social progress, and network informatization remains a powerful trend in today's world economic and social development. Therefore, we should build confidence and seize opportunities under favorable conditions such as global economic recovery, telecommunications market resurgence, and China's western development strategy to promote greater progress in fiber optic cable and communication cable technology and industry.
The western region is an area with complex terrain, wide distribution, and relatively backward communications. In the great economic development, communications must go first, requiring advanced fiber optic cable and communication cable products suited to development needs. Therefore, qualified products will find a good market here. Major projects such as the Qinghai-Tibet DC interconnection project also require large quantities of high-quality ADSS, OPGW and other types of optical cables and various cables to match. Therefore, various technologies, products, and achievements in fiber optic cables and communication cables will all be utilized in western power grid construction. At the same time, the modernization of the western region poses many new challenges to our products. The fiber optic cable and cable industry will also gain better opportunities for transformation and innovation while developing the western region, promoting the improvement and development of their own technical levels. (C114 Network)