New fiber lines can be installed to pass through empty conduits if the bandwidth is needed in the future, thus no new path needs to be trenched. Also, conduit makes the replacement of cables easier when an existing line has been damaged or requires changing to a line. The existing 2" conduit contains 4x 1/0 XLPE cable (rated for direct-burial), so I plan on pulling outdoor rated, non-metallic fiber through the same conduit. My original plan was to trench new conduit and run CAT8, but given that the existing run is all "customer side" and installed by the former. An important decision-making factor to consider is whether or not to duct fiber optic cable directly or encase the cable in a conduit. Having outlined the two strategies, one can easily note some advantages and disadvantages of each of the approaches. The idea is to use a 10 Gbit/s connection. We are building and are currently framing. Outdoor cable may be direct buried, pulled or blown into conduit or innerduct, or installed aerially between poles.
