How do you know they really know their stuff? Is it because they used a lot of words you're not typically familiar with? It's straight out of the "blind them with bullshit" playbook and the modus operandi for a lot of HN comments these days.
OP is concerned about extra cable length that is needed with this approach (completely unfounded), drops a few attentuation loss over distance calculations, but really, the practical engineer says: "we'll have only as many winds of fiber per meter as is neccessary"
Not trying to dazzle anyone with anything. Just trying to understand the problem And have discussion. I’m not a cable engineer but these are very practical considerations.
I did a quick calculation with a simple assumption and admitted that my initial estimation of added length was incorrect and it’s not an issue.
The bends around a narrow diameter cable are a potential issue for both added loss and cable reliability as are the different rates of thermal expansion.
As far as the reliability goes, I wasn’t sure so I looked it up, see Table 1 on page 6 below. There’s an example of cable failure for a typical FTTH network. If you see this, then you’ll note that the number of turns and the radius of those bends is important in predicting the reliability of the cable plant. It’s worth noting that the cable plant failure mechanisms are dominated by breakage due to other things and not mechanical fatigue.
As long as the bend radius is >10mm the failure rate should be <0.5ppm per turn. For a 38mm diameter cable the failure rate <0.1ppm/ turn.
OP is concerned about extra cable length that is needed with this approach (completely unfounded), drops a few attentuation loss over distance calculations, but really, the practical engineer says: "we'll have only as many winds of fiber per meter as is neccessary"