Armored vs Standard Fiber Optic Cable- What’s the impact?

A few years back, manufacturers began to place a heavy armored protective metal shell over their traditional fiber cable builds.  This product became known as “Armored” and is built in much the same way as “MC cable” is in the electrical industry.  By having an armored fiber optic cable, a client (and their contractor) no longer needed to pay to have innerduct installed between termination points.  Innerduct is the orange or white (Plenum) plastic tubing usually in a 1” to 2” size (O.D.) used to protect the fiber optic cable and provide a pathway for future fiber optic cables to be pulled in.  In plenum environments, the innerduct can cost the client up to $ 3.00 per foot though and in certain vertical riser rooms, these innerducts can begin to use up valuable space in the vertical sleeves/conduits/core drills/etc..  The armored fiber optic cable cuts down on space used in busy areas such as riser rooms and in the case of a plenum environment, armored costs less than the standard fiber coupled with plenum (CMP) innerduct.  ITN and AMP NETCONNECT offer Armored fiber optic cable in many different performance levels, sheathing ratings, strand counts, etc..  from indoor, outdoor, OSP, to 12 strand to 288 strand, to riser rated and plenum rated, to 62.5 multi mode to XG Laser Optimized 50 micron for 10GIG performance.