As an integrator from 2005 to 2023, I’ve pulled more miles of wire than I could count. The part that always shocked me was the constant change of specifications, even with the stuff buried in-wall. Years ago DirecTV changed their spec, requiring many homes to get new wire installed or stapled on the outside. Category cable has also been constantly changing, with talk now of cat8 as the official replacement for augmented cat6 (cat6a). And HDMI? It was launched in December 2002 as v1.0, and now we are at v2.1, with eight versions in-between. So in the past 11 years there have been 10 versions of HDMI, roughly a new version every 13 months.
As an integrator or someone building a new home, what are you to do, especially when considering that change will occur faster in the future? Are you ready to have a home or wire a home where the wiring is considered outdated within just a couple years of install? And I would strongly caution thinking it will all go wireless, this has been talked about long before I got in the industry, yet we still pull millions of miles of wire in homes and businesses every year because of the instability associated with wireless. And this is before we even think about the greater data speeds and higher resolution content to come.
At IFP Connect, we are focused on truly future proofing the wiring in homes and businesses, and the only way to do that is with fiber. Fiber is different than copper (coax, category cable, and standard HDMI cables) because it’s speed and capacity is only limited by the electronics on the end. This allows the easily accessible electronics to be updated in the future as the needs of the home or business change. The problem up until now is that there have not been products specifically engineered for converting fiber to standard RJ45 network connectors. IFP Connect invented and has patents pending for our unique topology that allows fiber to replace category cable, at costs lower than many category cable backbones.
Imagine having fiberoptic cable throughout your home or business, knowing that whatever speed or needs arise in the future, your structure will support it. IFP products support TCP/IP network traffic, but there is nothing preventing us from having future products that could support HDMI, network, and more, all over that same strand of fiber.
Now is the time for us to back away from copper as the medium of choice for signal transfer. Fiberoptics has been talked about for years for new construction, but there was never the hardware to make it feasible. With IFP Connect switches and transceivers, that time is now.
As always, reach out to us at www.ifpconnect.com to learn more.
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