Thanks to Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH), residents in around 1000 homes and many businesses now have faster, more extensive access to the internet, TV and telephony (Triple Play), and to many additional services offered by seven providers. Over the next few years, around 6300 homes and 700 businesses will be connected to the new fibre-optic network each year. The St Gallen public utility company and the installation companies involved have been deploying large amounts of special cables and FTTH connection boxes from Daetwyler Cables - and will continue to do so.

With the new fibre-optic network it will be possible to transfer digital information at data rates of up to one gigabit per second (1 Gbit/s). Private and commercial users will have access to four fibres at each FTTH outlet, with one of these fibres reserved for Swisscom services. Overall, they have a free choice of services offered by seven providers. In addition to Swisscom, these are Cyberlink, Init7, Iway, Mhs@internet, Mygate and Telecom Liechtenstein. The FTTH connections provide businesses with faster remote access to the company network, video conferences with excellent picture and sound quality, and fast data backup in external computing centres.

The town authorities of St Gallen were very professional in their preparations for the ongoing installation work, which included technical trainings and a binding product catalogue compiled for the companies involved. The installation itself was entrusted to highly trained specialists from four companies: Etavis Grossenbacher AG, Huber+Monsch AG, Schmid Elektro AG and Binder & Co. AG.

During installation of the fibre-optic network, Daetwyler Cables has been supplying the St Gallen public utility company with outdoor fibre-optic cables on an ongoing basis. Within the buildings, Etavis Grossenbacher, Huber+Monsch, Schmid and Binder are making extensive use of FTTH in-house products from Daetwyler Cables. These include surface-mounted FTTH connection boxes (optical telecommunication outlets) with two LC/APC adapters and two LC/APC pigtails. For cable laying in existing pipe systems, Etavis is using a fibre-optic cable with a tight buffer construction which is just 2.8 mm "thick" and is fitted with a special type of fibre which allows a minimum bending radius.

"It was important to us that we could obtain all the products from a single source and could count on excellent, tried-and-tested collaboration", explains Marcel Baumgartner, head of the Telematics Business Unit at Etavis. "For this project Daetwyler Cables is once again supplying us with high-quality outlets and cables developed specifically for in-house FTTH installation which can be handled and installed quickly and easily by our experienced telematics specialists and splicing engineers."

During the summer and autumn other properties in the southern part of the old town and in the east of St Gallen will be connected to the new fibre-optic network. In subsequent years, around 7000 FTTH connections will be provided each year. The town plans to connect around 40,000 households and 4800 businesses to the fibre-optic network by 2017.

Installation of the new network and the provision of fibre-optic connections to buildings are being pre-financed by a loan and an investment by Swisscom. Last year, 82% of the town’s electorate voted in favour of the loan which amounts to 78 million Swiss francs.

Source: Daetwyler Cables, info.ch@daetwyler-cables.com