“Older fiber such as DSF does not meet requirements for newer DWDM systems. Aerial fibers are notorious for failing early. Over the years spans will have multiple fiber cuts degrade and become useless and strands are labeled as unusable.”
I understand about DWDM and older fiber designs on long routes. Even then, I’m not sure nonlinear optical affects are a big deal on shorter big city links
As for aerial fiber, if folks don’t trim trees, it has problems. (We regularly trim trees on our 40 mile internal aerial fiber network - it’s held up great for 20 years)
I don’t understand abandoning fiber as unusable — why not fix it? Fusion splices are so low loss that you could have 20 repair splices without affecting performance.
It’s so much cheaper to repair fiber than to abandon it.
Are they just being fatalistic? Lazy? Or am I missing something?
Fiber is not copper.