Innovative approach TKF and Koning & Hartman

TKF and K&H’s innovative approach to make fibre optic deployment cheaper

Faster deployment, higher quality and less material use Within a few years, the larger part of the Netherlands will have a fibre to the home connection. The need for bandwidth has increased drastically over the last years and both companies and households demand ever faster transfer of data and information for various applications. Consumers, too, get more and more used to downloading several gigabytes of music and video. High speed has become more important and even indispensable.

While data can be transferred at the speed of light, the construction of fibre optic networks is also accelerating and becoming more efficient for all parties involved thanks to innovative solutions from Haaksbergen-based TKF (BV Twentsche Kabelfabriek), an important player in the fibre optic projects market. Tackled together with System Integrator Koning & Hartman (K&H), a project in Renswoude, the Netherlands, proved that operators and developers of fibre optic networks will be able to save considerably on installation costs.

Most notably, the realisation costs play an important role in the deployment of fibre optic networks. Considerable amounts can be saved, especially when connecting individual homes. TKF's innovative ACE concept for fibre optic networks takes care of that. Dolf van der Heijden, sales manager at TKF: "The last length of cable into people's homes is usually the bottle-neck. There was too much needless running around with long cables, which also resulted in the ditches remaining open for too long. Instead of connecting 48 homes at once to the main cable using a junction box, the so-called splice closure, we now only connect 24 at a time. This brings us closer to the homes, which means we need to run 50% less cable to people's homes. This saves installation time and costs".

Ready-made cable harnesses
Thanks to the technical contribution of engineers at Koning & Hartman, we can now use smart software to calculate the exact length of fibre optic cable we need to run to the homes. This makes bundling cables easier and therefore the turnkey production. "Thanks to those ready-made (pre-assembled) cable bundles pre-fitted with splice closure, we can substantially contribute to more efficient material use and more effective processes. Deployment is now much faster, with higher quality results and sharply reduced amounts of waste. Naturally, this also benefits the environment. We now deploy entire cable harnesses at once," Jasper Lankwarden, project manager at Koning & Hartman explains.

Dolf van der Heijden adds: "A cable harness is nothing new. Everyone has seen it in the automobile industry. Cars often harbour hundreds of metres of ready-made cable harnesses. We are now assembling fibre optic cable harnesses in our factories, which considerably improves quality and speed than when done in the field. Every home connection has already been prepared in this harness, including connectors in a protective sleeve. At TKF, we call it our Homerun® technique”. TKF and Koning & Hartman's innovative solutions are highly appreciated by its clients that deploy fibre optic cable, proof of which can be found in the words of Kimmo Stroker, project manager at Reggefiber: "We aim to connect as many customers to our fibre optic network as possible. In order to do this efficiently, we need to constantly innovate. It is amazing to see how Koning & Hartman and TKF put this into practice for us."