Switched from coax to fiber on a big job last month

Switched from coax to fiber on a big job last month. I was dead set on sticking with RG6 for this 12-unit apartment complex in Denver because that's what I know, but the lead guy insisted we try fiber since the customer wanted gig speeds. After running the first unit and seeing how clean the termination was with no signal loss, I'm fully converted now. Has anyone else had a project where changing your usual setup actually made things easier?

3 comments

3 Comments

zara57220d ago

You know what's funny, I had almost the exact opposite experience last year. I was all in on fiber for a new office building downtown, but the building's existing conduit was so old and narrow we couldn't pull the fiber through without kinking it. Ended up having to run coax for half the floors anyway. Now I wonder if that whole fiber push was really worth it for every job, or if we just got lucky the first time.

claire_walker19d agoTop Commenter

I used to think fiber was always the answer until I read your story about the conduit being too small, @zara572, and that really made me stop and reconsider. It's easy to get caught up in the hype of fiber and forget that older buildings just weren't built for it, so sometimes coax is the practical choice. Your post kind of changed my mind about forcing fiber into every project, because getting it to work badly isn't better than running something that just works.

bennett.noah17d ago

Three fiber pulls in a row failed here until we switched to pre-terminated runs.