The investment value of 5G series optical fiber and cable

"Daily Financial Report" recently launched a series of articles on the 5G industry chain, hoping to present the complete development status of the entire industry through the introduction of the system, and this article continues to focus on the subdivision of optical fiber and cable.

As we all know, optical fiber and cable communication has replaced the traditional cable to become the main communication transmission mode in the Internet era, this transmission mode in the "electric-optic-electrical" conversion process to achieve data and signal transmission, with wide frequency band, low loss, high reliability characteristics, the transmission medium is the optical fiber in the optical cable, that is, the optical fiber.

The transmission rate of a single optical fiber can reach several Gbps, and the single transmission distance can reach tens of kilometers, and hundreds of thousands of optical fibers can be combined into optical cables, which can strengthen the strength of optical fibers at the same time, carry out a larger amount of data transmission.

Composition of optical fiber and cable

The manufacturing process of optical fiber and cable can be basically regarded as optical fiber prefabricated rod - optical fiber - optical cable. Fiber prefabrication rod is made of high purity silicon and other raw materials, which plays a decisive role in the quality and performance of optical fiber, and is the most difficult and profitable link, which is known as the "crown pearl" of the fiber industry in the industry. Optical fiber is the optical fiber prefabricated rod by coating and wire drawing process into optical fiber, optical fiber is the optical fiber sheath cable processing into optical fiber. From the perspective of expansion, the profit proportion of optical fiber prefabricated rod, optical fiber, and optical cable in the industrial chain is 70%, 20%, and 10% respectively, and it can be intuitively seen from this data that optical fiber prefabricated rod is the top priority of the industrial chain.

Optical fiber prefabricated bar is made of silicon tetrachloride for drawing optical fibers, is the core material of optical fiber and cable, the quality of optical fiber prefabricated bar has a direct impact on the quality of optical fiber, and optical fiber transmission needs to minimize the transmission loss, so the optical fiber prefabricated bar of silicon tetrachloride to achieve extremely high purity. This also makes the fiber prefabrication rod become a high technical threshold and high value-added material.

At present, only a few enterprises in the world have mastered the production process of optical fiber prefabricated rods, and the supply is relatively tight. It is no exaggeration to say that mastering the production process of optical fiber prefabrication bars is to break through the biggest barriers in the optical fiber and cable industry and stand at the top of the industrial chain.

China's early fiber prefabrication technology is in the short board, 80% of the demand needs to be imported from the United States and Japan, later through the introduction of technology and independent research and development, China has gradually mastered the production technology of fiber prefabrication rods, according to the data released by CRU, in the world's main production of fiber prefabrication rods in the 20 enterprises, China has Changfei Optical fiber, Hengtong Optoelectronics, Zhongtian Technology, Fiberhome Communication, Hangzhou Futong and other eight enterprises in the list, of which Changfei Optical fiber is the first enterprise in China's optical fiber prefabrication capacity, accounting for about 30% of the total domestic production capacity.

However, the demand for optical fiber prefabricated rods in China is very high, and at present, it can not achieve complete self-sufficiency, there is still about 10% of the demand to rely on imports, and the localization rate needs to be further improved. In 2018, China extended the anti-dumping policy for fiber prefabrication rods to 2023, which is undoubtedly an excellent opportunity for domestic fiber prefabrication enterprises to expand production capacity and seize the market.