Comcast upgrade reflects increasing importance of fiber optic cable

Comcast has also offered fiber-optic upgrades for customers in the Southern and Northeastern areas seeking a fasterinternet connection. Those interested in Comcast' most advanced Internet connection, over 500 Mbps, can request that the service provider make a trip to their home to install a direct fiber-optic connection and boost their bandwidth.

The addition of new fiber-optic cables is likely just one of many strategies that Comcast will employ to match the connection speeds of the competition. In fact, an article in the Washington Post suggests that hybrid coaxial networks (installations that take advantage of fiber-optics and copper cable within one network) are very popular among Internet service providers. These systems utilize a media converter to directly connect copper and fiber-optic systems. Retrofitting existing copper cables with fiberopticshelps ISP's like Comcast to increase bandwidth capacity without eliminating existing telecommunications infrastructure.

Comcast's decision to invest in more fiber-optic installations also reflects the industry's general acceptance of fiber-optic cable as the medium of tomorrow. Michael Render, president of RVA Market Research LLC, told The Wall Street Journal that fiber-optic cables will retain value thanks to the medium's reliability and large capacity for uploading data.

Perle has an extensive range of Managed and Unmanaged Fiber Media Converters to extended copper-based Ethernet equipment over a fiber optic link, multimode to multimode and multimode to single mode fiber up to 160 km.