Disadvantages of Optical Fiber Communications

1. High initial cost

. The initial cost of installation or setting up cost is very high compared to all other system.

2. Maintenance and repairing cost

. The maintenance and repairing of fiber optic systems is not only difficult but expensive also.

3. Jointing and test procedures

. Since optical fibers are of very small size. The fiber joining process is very costly and requires skilled manpower.

4. Tensile stress

. Optical fibers are more susceptible to buckling, bending and tensile stress than copper cables. This leads to restricted practice to use optical fiber technology to premises and floor backbones with a few interfaces to the copper cables.

5. Short links

. Eventhough optical fiber cables are inexpensive, it is still not cost effective to replace every small conventional connector (e.g. between computers and peripherals),as the price of optoelectronic  transducers are very high.

6. Fiber losses

. The amount of optical fiber available to the photodetector at the end of fiber length depends on various  fiber losses such as scattering, dispersion, attenuation and reflections.