It has long been understood that an inherent limitation of optical fiber is the increased attenuation due to bending of the fiber. Standard single-mode fibers lose their signal when bent around tight corners and are routed through a building, which limits telecommunications carriers deploying fiber-to-the-home (FTTH)-particularly in multiple-dwelling units-to tradeoffs between bend performance and other optical and field installation attributes. Now, with ClearCurve technology from Corning, Inc., Corning, N.Y., telecommunications carriers can install and handle optical fiber cable with the ease of copper cable, while providing end users with all of the bandwidth benefits of optical fiber.

ClearCurve optical fiber is 100 times more bendable than standard fiber and allows cabled optical fiber to be bent around very tight corners with virtually no signal loss. Corning's breakthrough is based on a nanoStructures optical fiber design with a controlled mesh configuration within the fiber cladding to deliver the bend performance. ClearCurve provides the best bend performance in the industry while also being backwards compatible with standard single-mode fibers.