Thanks for sharing it. It gave me a very interesting perspective on the problem.
Wondering if there's any advancement in fiber production that reduces these problems (cracks, etc), or reduces dB of loss over distance.
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"
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.
You don’t need to take my world for it on the loss. https://amphenol-ns.com/Blog/post/bend-radius-protecting-fib...
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.
https://www.corning.com/media/worldwide/coc/documents/Fiber/...