ABSTRACT
Telecommunication plastic cables were mainly joined by combining soft and hard adhesive tapes and lead or plastic sleeves. The outside diameters of telecommunication plastic cables ranged between 10 and 60 mm, depending on the number of pairs. If rubber packings were to be used, packings of approximately 30 different sizes had to be kept in stock. Therefore, it was difficult to use rubber packings with cable joining of telecommunication plastic cables. However, the range of the outside diameters of optical fiber cables is not large. Therefore, rubber packings are frequently used in joining optical fibers. Spare lengths of optical fibers are needed for the cable joining part, and these spare lengths of fibers are bent in a loop in the closure of a cable joint. Cable joining methods are divided roughly into two types: soft adhesive tapes and plastic sleeve and rubber packing and fiber-reinforced plastics sleeve.
