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Fluorine has a faction of etching or dissolving the glass. From a conventional chemist’s perspective, the use of fluorine-doped silica to synthesize glass was a bizarre idea. But SEI broke with convention and made the impossible possible. Its dedication to optical fiber development from the early 1970s and determined effort to create better products were finally rewarded.
Says Shigeru Tanaka, General Manager, Optical Communications R & D Laboratory of Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., which played a leading role in the development of Z-PLUS Fiber, “We are proud of our technology, because it is technology with a difference. If we are to continue taking pride in our technology, we need to be world-class. Nobody in this company would be proud to reach the top by emulating others. We were aware of the need for top class technology when we first started developing optical fiber nearly 30 years ago, and we worked on it assuming we would develop the best products in the world. We’ve continued our work to improve manufacturing methods, performance, quality, and reliability for close to 30 years. I believe our world record is the result of our sustained effort and experience over so many years.”
The Z-PLUS Fiber with fluorine-doped cladding is already in use in some 20 major submarine cable systems worldwide, including the trans-Pacific cable linking Japan and the U.S., as well as those linking Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Ultra-low attenuation optical fiber with a minimum repeater requirement had been long awaited for use in submarine cables, because of the huge cost and difficulty of maintaining underwater equipment.
SEI is currently the only company in the world that develops and manufactures ultra low-attenuation optical fiber like Z-Plus. “How to minimize attenuation with silica fiber is entirely up to us,” declares Tanaka. |
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| SEI's OPtical Communications R&D Laboratory |
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| Shigeru Tanaka, General Manager of Optical Communications R & D Laboratory |
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