Copper and technology is a huge topic these days, especially given its capacity to drive demand. And the boom in global data is right on message.
A new study by iXConsulting points to massive growth in data centre capacity worldwide and with ‘hyperscale cloud service providers’ a big reason why.
Copper has always been a key partner in data centre infrastructure, with twisted pair copper cabling underpinning performance for decades.
But demand for bandwidth keeps rising exponentially, with many operators targeting networks with data rates of 100Gbps or even 400Gbps in future.
Fibre has been the big winner in this scenario given its inherent ability to deal with much bigger bandwidth demands.
Still the shift to all fibre hasn’t been easy for many companies given the high costs involved and sheer technical complexities.
The reality across the data centre industry-and similar to other sectors like consumer broadband networks-is that copper and fibre will work in partnership to deliver the best outcomes.
This is particularly the case as data centres shift to higher Cat8 cabling standards, where copper will run the short reach connections and fibre will deal with the bigger aggregated traffic demands.