Simon Hopkins, a member of the Future Thinking Team at Prysmian UK, considers the future for building wires and cable.
The headlines tend to be about wireless technology – mobile phones, wireless chargers, sound systems that move around with us. But have you noticed any decline in the number of wires you install into houses? No? We don’t think you’re likely to in the near future – if anything, we predict that more cable will be required to support this wireless world.
The mobile phone is a great example. When we pick up our mobile (and for many of us it’s the first thing we touch in the morning) we think of it as a wireless device. But of course the phone is only part of the story.
We’re mobile, but the network isn’t. When we use our phone, its radio signal is converted at the nearest base station and then carried to its destination through a fixed fibre optic cable before being converted back into a radio signal for the final stage of the journey.
That journey can, of course, be around the corner or across the world, and the vehicle that carries the signal internationally? Cable, naturally.
All at sea
The entire internet-based communications system on which we increasingly rely is transmitted via a state-of-the-art network of cable for the simple reason that no wireless system can match the capacity, speed or reliability of fibre optic cable. The “cloud” that magically stores and transmits our whole connected world is actually under the sea.
In the spring of this year the most recently completed transatlantic communications cable is due to go into service. Funded jointly by Microsoft and Facebook, this project promises ever faster communication speed. These two technology giants are not investing in some kind of soon-to-be-obsolete technology, they’re building a network to support future growth.
It’s not only underwater that a physical infrastructure is required. Successive generations of mobile phones are developed with ever more capacity and options, requiring a growing number of mobile phone masts – with the cable that supports them. We anticipate that the introduction of 5G phones will simply increase the speed of that advance.
When it comes to wiring in the home, we’re focused more on power distribution than on communications systems, and it’s no secret that modern homes use more cable than ever before. All those apparently mobile devices still need to be charged and until we figure out how to share power across an air gap without causing irreparable harm to any living organism that happens to get in the way, we’re going to need cable to keep providing the power.
While the last ten years has seen an explosion in home entertainment devices, my own view is that the next ten will see a focus on reducing the environmental impact of all that technology.
The drive to develop electric cars is a great example, with the UK government setting target dates by which petrol and diesel cars should be phased out. All those electric cars will need to be charged and we’re already starting to see the development of streetside networks of charging stations supporting the all-important home charging capacity.
In the future it will not only be about how we use energy, it’s also about finding new ways to generate it cleanly. I can see a big future for local renewable energy generation, linking solar panels, wind turbines and ground-source heat pumps to provide power for individual homes and communities while feeding excess energy back into the national grid. More cable please!
Seeing the future
At Prysmian, our future thinking team is not concerned with alternatives to cable, but on ensuring that future cable products continue to advance in terms of efficiency and ease of use.
At the moment, for example, the whole power distribution network relies on copper and aluminium for the simple reason that these metals are the most efficient and cost-effective conductors of electricity yet discovered
That’s not necessarily a permanent conclusion. Prysmian was at the forefront of developing commercial fibre optic cable for telecommunications and it is entirely possible that our research teams will come up with a similarly radical alternative to the current metal conductors for power cable.
At the same time we’re focused on improving the performance of the cables supplied into the market. We’re all familiar with high-performance fire resistant cable, armoured, flexible, or easily strippable cable. Now we’re also working with sensors, developing tools that will report on the performance of cable or electrical appliances, alerting the user to underperformance or faults immediately.
As a global organisation, we have the resources to invest in research and development all the time, and are constantly introducing innovative products as we identify demand in any of our markets. The next really big development is always difficult to predict, but right now it is impossible to imagine our expanding range of technology being supported by anything other than an increasingly sophisticated cable network.
For more information about Prysmian’s range of cabling products visit: https://uk.prysmiangroup.com/my-prysmian