January 17, 2005 New Holland, PA -- Berk-Tek, A Nexans Co., has announced the Underwriters' Laboratory (UL) listing of Adventum LC, which the company describes as the world's first limited-combustible fiber-optic cable.
Adventum LC cables will carry the fire hazard classification listing of FHC 25/50 and meet the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 255 Standard Test Method of Surface Burning Characteristics of Building Materials, and the NFPA 259 Standard Test Method for Potential Heat of Building Materials.
Because limited-combustible (LC) rated cables help to minimize the potential fuel load and produce up to 20 times less smoke than comparable plenum-rated cables they offer enhanced life-safety and electronic asset protection for facilities such as hospitals and healthcare facilities, as well as mission-critical data centers and storage-area networks.
"Smoke is the primary issue for both time-to-exit concerns and potential electronic equipment damage," said Beni Blell, fiber-optic business manager at Berk-Tek. "The key feature of the Adventum LC design is its superior fire safety performance over the current optical fiber non-conductive plenum rating."
Adventum LC also provides many of the same benefits as the original Adventum series cables:
- Totally dry loose tube construction replaces gel-type filling compounds in the cable core or buffer tube.
- A diameter up to 35 percent smaller than tight-buffered cable of equal fiber counts.
- Superior bandwidth using GIGAlite multimode and singlemode optical fibers.
- Factory-direct pre-terminated assembly available guarantees full compatibility with all current field terminable connector technologies.