The company’s work has already garnered attention in the defense market, which requires very ruggedized solutions. Moore notes that Gore’s product meets the Arinc 802-3 standard, and recently qualified to “EN4641 Part 301 and that is basically for the Eurofighter in Europe … so we have recently qualified for that and a lot of these have some very serious tests that mimic harsh environments.”
To streamline fiber terminations, Gore boasts a strategic partnership with an Ohio-based specialist named Cotsworks, which works with “a lot with the major players in the field and have some very close relationships in the aerospace industry”, says Moore. Cotsworks has come up with a solution to splice cables in under five minutes.
On the commercial side, Gore is working with “basically all the major relevant players, OEMs, system integrators on our fiber optic cabling and guiding people from the transition from copper to fiber. People are very hesitant still.”
As mentioned, a certain amount of fiber has been in play for years in the inflight entertainment world. One now-defunct company, called Lumexis, even extended fiber all the way to the IFE screen. “I thought their technology was really good. It was smart and I think it might have been just a little bit too early. And I think now we are starting to see people really get into the realms of speeds that require fiber optic cabling,” says Moore.
Stressing that his opinion on this matter is “just total speculation”, he posits that fiber-to-the-screen might make a comeback, particularly as industry graduates to 4K IFE content. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was ultimately a fiber-to-the-seat solution again. To me that just seems to make sense to minimize how much space you are taking up within the seat. And there’s also a lot of concern about EMI immunity as well [for IFE].”
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