Shows
Fiber FocusTrusted Suppliers Help Customers Navigate Extreme DemandWhen the clock is ticking and lead times grow longer, solid manufacturer/customer relationships are invaluable.In his more than 35 years of telecom experience, senior product manager Greg Pierce has seen it all. He reflects in this episode of Fiber Focus on the state of the industry, especially how massive, AI-fueled demand is straining global manufacturing capacity for fiber optic cabling and connectivity products. This scenario is a familiar one for Greg, who offers some advice for customers navigating supply uncertainty.He underscores the importance of working closely with trusted suppliers, proactively if possible, and...
2025-12-0111 minFiber FocusChallenging Times Demand Creative Cable SolutionsPreviously on Fiber Focus, we discussed how artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly consuming the industry’s supply of high-performance, high-density network products. Loren Rapp dives deeper in this episode.As Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s product line manager for fiber optic cable, Loren has day-in and day-out supply chain experience. Listen in for her insights on the creative workarounds that customers can consider when demand is skyrocketing for particular products. For example, pliable ribbon cable, aka intermittent bonded ribbon (IBR) cable, is a precision-manufactured product optimized for the AI factory projects that are racing to ramp up a...
2025-11-1710 minFiber FocusCreative Supply Chain in a Booming MarketA July 2025 Synergy Research Group report projected that hyperscale capacity will increase threefold through the next six years. Josh Seawell, our director of product management, read about the report in Cabling Installation & Maintenance magazine and hopped on this episode of Fiber Focus to discuss it.While hyperscalers are expected to represent the lion’s share of oncoming demand for fiber optic cabling and connectivity products, colocation providers and private network operators are participating in the AI boom with their own significant infrastructure investments. This demand can certainly strain the supply chain at times, but Josh encourages customers to...
2025-11-0312 minFiber FocusLet’s Talk About Money Cutting Costs Not QualityYuko Agano returns to Fiber Focus for this episode discussing how air-blown fiber (ABF) technologies can help address rising project costs. With labor making up 60-80 percent of the price tag for a typical network build, streamlining the number of installers and reducing their time on-site can yield significant savings.As Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s product manager for FutureFLEX® Air-Blown Fiber® Solutions, Yuko has seen time and again the labor savings that network operators can realize with ABF on their bills of materials. Instead of the five or more people needed to pull conventional cable over many hour...
2025-10-2005 minFiber FocusWhy Fiber Optics is the Best Career You’ve Never Heard Of“This will be the field I retire. I love it. I’d never heard of it before.”After serving in the U.S. Navy, Andrew Degidio embarked on a new career journey in telecom. He got his start as a field service engineer without ever laying eyes on a fusion splicing machine, and now he is Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s senior technical manager focusing on fusion splicer development and support.In this episode of Fiber Focus, Andrew shares his perspective on how well the military prepares people for stable, well-paying industry roles. Beyond the training, troubles...
2025-10-0612 minFiber FocusA Future in FiberMeet Lauren Deloatch. She was the marketing director for a golf club when she was recruited by Sumitomo Electric Lightwave nearly 10 years ago. Since then, Lauren’s contributions to the telecom industry have included the free, two-day Fusion Splicing Certificate Course that she developed in collaboration with AWS and Pearson.Join us for an engaging conversation about Lauren’s career-pivoting experience, telecom’s widespread growth, and a rapidly accelerating demand for new industry workers. She encourages people of all backgrounds and education levels to consider getting their start (and earning a livable wage) as a fusion splicing techni...
2025-09-2210 minFiber FocusNext-Generation Data Center Network Design AutomationFiber Focus welcomes Dwayne Holst to this episode for a preview of the next breakthrough in data center network design. A data center optical communications researcher with Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, Dwayne is currently working on “digital twinning,” creating network simulations that enable data center operators to view and optimize a virtual version of their complete physical networks before ordering a single part.The roadmap for this capability is full of promise; next-generation data center network design automation will be able to generate hyperaccurate bills of material, output construction work orders for network builds, send testing instructions for huma...
2025-09-0811 minFiber FocusThe Best-Case Scenarios for Air-Blown Fiber®In the 30+ years that air-blown fiber (ABF) has been deployed in North America, industry results show that it is the ideal installation technology in specific scenarios. Yuko Agano, Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s product manager supporting air-blown fiber and cable technologies, returns to this episode of Fiber Focus to outline installations where ABF can deliver better installation speed, labor savings, and future-readiness than traditional deployment methods – especially for network operators who place value on being able to keep their facilities up and running without disruption during network expansions and upgrades.Is ABF uniquely positioned to deliver the strongest ROI...
2025-08-1809 minFiber FocusHave it Your Way! Customer-Driven Product and SolutionsSumitomo Electric Lightwave offers a broad portfolio of leading-edge connectivity products and solutions, but how does the company respond when customers need a unique solution for their network challenges that industry manufacturers are not yet prepared to meet? In this episode of Fiber Focus, Josh Seawell, our director of product management, shares stories of recent customer collaborations that have sparked innovative products and solutions. These new developments often evolve to benefit customers far beyond the initial collaboration. Tune in to this conversation to learn more.Fiber Focus is a Sumitomo Electric Lightwave podcast. Subscribe, share this episode...
2025-08-0412 minFiber FocusCustomer-Driven Innovation of Highly Efficient PanelsMany of the products in Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s portfolio were brought to life through customer collaboration. Greg Pierce, senior product manager for Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s connectivity products, is back to describe a lean, efficient rack-mount panel offering as an example of customer-driven innovation. Designed hand-in-hand with enterprise customers, our 1RU-3RU panels delivered on their need for lower-cost hardware in protected, out-of-the-way closets, corners, and colocation facilities. Without sacrificing on quality or technician-friendless, these products are now available for all of our customers to consider as part of their network planning. Tune in to this conversation and chec...
2025-07-2111 minFiber FocusBreaking Into Telecom: Careers in Network Infrastructure for the Next GenerationIn this episode of Fiber Focus, Teylor Bremekamp, PMP, RCDD, discusses his path from aerospace engineering to becoming a fiber network design engineer with Sumitomo Electric Lightwave. Teylor’s 10 years of industry experience have led him to consider the imperative of bringing more people into the industry to step into ever-increasing telecom jobs. While many of these roles are highly specialized, the industry itself is broad with positions ranging from Big Tech to manufacturing and installations. Some of these jobs require a college degree or hands-on experience, and others support at-home or on-the-job learning. Teylor details a few of th...
2025-07-0711 minFiber FocusUnderstanding Air-Blown Fiber® vs Microduct Cable: A Deep Dive into FutureFLEX® SolutionsAir-blown fiber® and microduct cable have a few things in common, but they are not the same. In this episode of Fiber Focus, Yuko Agano, Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s product manager supporting air-blown fiber, breaks down the differences between these products. In contrast to the conventional method of pulling cable through conduits, both air-blown fiber and microduct cable are blown through conduits using air pressure. Another similarity is that both of these air-blown technologies speed deployment, minimize downtime, and optimize conduit space. The key differences between these technologies are the products themselves, the pathways and blowing equipment they use, and...
2025-06-1609 minFiber FocusSplicing 200µm Pliable Ribbon is Easier Than You ThinkJosh Seawell, Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s director of product management, returns to Fiber Focus for a conversation about splicing 200 micron pliable fiber optic ribbon cable. Given its role in enabling the AI Boom and solving for space limitations within data center footprints, 200 micron fiber adoption will continue to surge. For splice technicians, that translates to projects where they could be splicing either the conventional 250 micron fibers or the more compact 200 micron fibers on any given day – or they could be splicing the two fiber sizes together. Fortunately, fusion splicing equipment is evolving right along with cable innovations. A variety of f...
2025-06-0210 minFiber FocusFrom Loose Tube to Multicore: A Journey Through Fiber Cable InnovationsStarting with the first loose tube fiber optic cable of the 1970s, Loren Rapp, Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s product line manager for fiber optic cable, highlights the key drivers in the evolution of cable design. Initial designs focused on providing protection for fibers being pulled in long-haul applications – either by hand across land or by boat in oceanic deployments – to enable telephone and fax services. The industry has come a long way from offering plain old telephone service (POTS), and fiber optic cable manufacturers have enabled every step of this evolution. Many of today’s cables are designed to pack mor...
2025-05-1911 min
Mon Carnet, l'actu numérique{ENTREVUE} - Formation professionnelle en fibre optiqueRetour sur une formation gratuite à l’épissure de fibre optique qui a été offerte au Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne, en partenariat avec AWS et Sumitomo Electric Lightwave. Axée sur la pratique, elle visait à répondre au manque de techniciens dans un secteur en forte demande. Entrevue avec le formateur Quentin Tricard.
2025-05-1309 minFiber FocusFrom Empty Panels to Factory-Finished Solutions: A Deep Dive into Fiber ConnectivityNot all fiber optic patch panels are built the same. Greg Pierce, senior product manager for Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s connectivity products, dives into the reasons why one customer may choose a fully factory-connectorized “plug and play” solution and another would opt for an empty “no bells, no whistles” panel. Pre-connectorization comes with many advantages: high-quality work completed in a clean factory environment, fewer splice points overall with their accompanying dB loss, and savings in terms of on-site installation time and labor costs. The case for pre-connectorization often grows as the network’s fiber density grows; a hyper-scale data center bill...
2025-05-0509 minFiber FocusUnderstanding Pliable Ribbon Technology: Change Can be Hard, Pliable Ribbon Makes it EasyIn this inaugural episode of Fiber Focus, Josh Seawell, Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s director of product management, makes the case for embracing change when it comes to pliable fiber optic ribbon cables. Acknowledging that technology adoption can come with some fear, uncertainty, and doubt, Josh shows how easy it is to navigate pliable ribbon’s almost-flat learning curve. Even better, it comes with a steep payoff related to deployment time, labor costs, and space savings. Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s pliable ribbon cable, offered globally by the name Freeform Ribbon™, is 12x faster to splice vs. single-fiber splicing and delivers 2x the fi...
2025-04-2111 min
Telecom Top 5Why Air-Blown Fiber? All about Air-Blown Fiber solutionSumitomo Electric Lightwave is the first company that brought the Air Blown Fiber (ABF) technology to the United States over 30 years ago and since then, we are the market’s leading company to provide the best ABF solution. For an environment where operation downtime must be minimal, Air Blown Solution brings a great advantage. Sumitomo’s Future FLEX Air Blown Fiber provides innovative way to create a network path with easy 3 steps by using 5 components.
FutureFLEX’s 5 components are
Tube Cable
Fiber Bundle
Tube Distribution Equipment
Fiber Termination Equipment
Blowing Equipment
Step 1: Create an End-to-End Tube Cable Pat...
2022-10-2024 minTelecom Top 5Easy and Fast Fiber Deployment with the FutureFLEX Air-Blown Fiber SolutionSumitomo Electric Lightwave was the first company to bring Air-Blown Fiber (ABF) technology to the United States over 30 years ago, and since then is the market’s leading company to provide the best ABF solution. Sumitomo’s FutureFLEX® Air-Blown Fiber® provides innovative ways to create a network path with 3 easy steps using 5 components.
Topics of discussion:
What are the 5 components of Air-Blown Fiber (ABF) technology? (Also see below for the list.)
What are the 3 steps to creating a network path with FutureFLEX? (Also see below for more details.)
How is Freeform Ribbon used in ABF?
How has ABF...
2021-06-1517 min
WISEUPThe ABC's of ABF with SumitomoWe’re speaking with John Balestracci, Northeast Regional Manager of Sumitomo’s Electric Lightwave division about the ABC's of ABF.
What is ABF? It stands for Air Blown Fiber; It is not a one size fits all solution; however, John goes into the do’s and don’ts and where the true benefits can be achieved within your network. He gives us the 411 on Sumitomo and what they have been doing for the last 138+ years. Have a listen to episode 1.6 on WiseUp, to learn more about Sumitomo Electric Lightwave ABF or learn about their other fiber solutions on sumito...
2020-05-0621 min