For example, optical fiber does not radiate, and because optical fiber doesn't carry electricity, optical fiber is immune to electrical interference. Optical fiber is lightweight, flexible, and has become easy to handle and install. Installation cost premiums over copper continue to diminish and are fast approaching parity, also the life span of fiber is longer than that of copper. Fiber optics is a secure medium that cannot be overheard by a third party because if the signal is wiretapped, light loss is unavoidable, and the connection fails. For this reason fiber optics is the preferred medium for data security applications.
Optical fiber supports greater distances than copper.
Unshielded twisted-pair Category 5 copper cables must be less than 100 meters in length, which is strictly due to signal attenuation. Copper-based Gigabit Ethernet is even more restrictive in terms of transmission length segments. But fiber optic cables can carry signals up to 2 kilometers over multimode fiber and 100 kilometers over singlemode fiber before signal degradation becomes a limiting factor. This length restriction on the media is typically the rationale for moving to a fiber optic backbone. Optical fiber is far more scalable than copper.