IVC comments on fibre technology in construction

IVC Media states that fibre technology heralds the arrival of an integrated construction era: Fibre is the Future, by Ray Harding, managing director of IVC Media.

The fact that all end user, electrical devices in buildings are now IP addressable, from telephony to door security to wireless broadband, the very latest fibre technology can now take advantage of the IP addressable nature of digitisation, making integrated smart buildings a reality.

Building projects with multiple sites like hotels, high density office buildings, university campuses or city wide networks, can all benefit from these developments.

Remotely controlled centralised AV, IT, security and access control management infrastructures that are simple to use, benefit the environment and cuts costs are now possible.

IVC Media has recently been appointed to create such an infrastructure for the Tortuga Beach Resort and Spa in the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa.

The IVC network will provide multiple services to the resort including: fast internet access, multi-channel high definition TV capabilities, video on demand, telephony, fire detection, door entry systems and CCTV all controlled by a remotely monitored, centralised management system, linking leisure areas, shops, villas, apartments and a spa.

The fibre backbone technology employed provides a future-proofed, high bandwidth capacity network that supplies multiple services to numerous dwellings while maintaining optimum performance.

Such as system takes advantage of a GPON (Passive Optical Network) which is a point-to-multipoint, fibre-to-the-premises network architecture using optical splitters deployed across the resort site.

In this way, a single optical fibre will be used to serve multiple premises, reducing the amount of fibre and central office equipment required compared with a point-to-point architecture, saving budget and simplifying the system.

The environmental impact of the implementation of such fibre technology infrastructures is also significant.

IVC recently calculated that a 1000 bedroom hotel using a fibre network would use twenty times less power than the same resort using traditional copper cable.

In addition, as copper is a finite resource its cost inevitably continues to rise.

Fibre, on the other hand is a cost-effective option because it is so widely available.

Fibre technology has long been used in the telephony industry for example, but only now we are seeing how its advantages can be integrated into modern building projects around the world.

Back to top