Samsung Fiberoptics, Attacks West Europe with Enhanced - Bend Insensitive Fiber
Samsung Fiberoptics makes the newly developed Enhanced - Bend Insensitive Fiber (E-BIF) go ahead to aggressively attack the high value-added markets including Europe, etc.
According to the industry on the 30th of this month, Samsung Fiberoptics (Representative: Geun-myeon Lee) comes out to reinforce sales for the oversea markets including Western Europe, etc. still with high demand of Fiber-To-The-Home using E―BIF, while capturing demand in a relatively high value-added product, drop cable area, in Korea.
Samsung Fiberoptics showed inclined business structure to new markets including Asia, etc. so that its sales from Southeast Asia recorded more than 40 % of the entire revenue last year. However, it has a plan to increase weight of the markets in advanced countries from next year through E―BIF, and expand the high value-added product area.
Its major attacking subject is Western European markets. Because, while US and Eastern Europe do not have good business situations of the cable markets due to economic depression, but Western Europe has become active in FTTH business.
On the markets in the advanced countries, labor cost occupies considerable share of the fiber optic cable installation. Thus, those fiber optic cables with a little high price but allowing fast and convenient installation have high demand. The domestic communication providers have also reviewed methods to apply them to drop cable and home use at 20 ~ 30 % higher price than the existing cables.
E-BIF is a fiber optic cable with little loss of signal even when it is bent, turned or bound, which Samsung Fiberoptics has recently succeeded development and mass production. The existing optical fibers have problems information loss or signal disconnection in severe cases from bending or turning over a certain level due to characteristics of its main material, glass. As such, it is difficult to install them on the unavoidable location for bending or turning with high cost. E-BIF realizes convenience at a level the existing copper cable and connects the fiber optic cables to the inside of a house to allow perfect FTTH.
In the past, the competitors such as Corning USA, etc. released similar products as E-BIF, but their commercialization has been slowly progressed due to their low durability from the method to inject air into the fiber and problems occurred from cutting and splicing the cables.
A concerning person of the industry said, “sales of Samsung Fiberoptics in Europe and US markets is not big yet, but unexpectedly, Samsung has built solid network with the local communication providers and agents,” and added, “As they have recently succeeded the first trade with a Mexican company, it is expected that sales from E-BIF will be steeply expanded.”