A small fiber cable, often one to twelve fibers, run aerially, buried or through conduit from a terminal or pedestal to the customer's premises. Drops are often pre-connectorized with hardened connectors that plug into the terminal without splicing. It is the last and most frequently damaged link in an FTTH network, cut by lawn mowers, landscapers and fence posts.
Drop's cut where the homeowner put the new fence in, run a temporary across the yard and get a locate for the bore.
Also heard as
- drop cable
- service drop
Related terms
FTTH
Fiber to the Home: access networks that run fiber all the way into each residence.
PON
Passive Optical Network: a point-to-multipoint fiber network where unpowered splitters share one fiber among many users.
Bend-insensitive fiber
Fiber designed to lose very little light when bent tightly, used in drops, apartment wiring and dense patching.
Splitter
A passive optical device that divides the light from one fiber among several output fibers.