Swiss cabling specialist Reichle & De-Massari has launched the world’s thinnest Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) copper trunk cable.

The new ThinCompact Cat.6A cable shaves almost 70 percent off the bulk of standard STP cables, helping simplify equipment management, improve airflow and squeeze more cables into existing trays.

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R&M is a family-owned business based in the town of Wetzikon, near Zurich, that has been making cables for the telecommunications industry for the past 50 years.

Its latest innovation, the ThinCompact Cat.6A, is a preterminated copper cable with an outer diameter of only 13.9 mm that nevertheless keeps all the shielding qualities of its big-boned brethren. It also weighs around 50 percent less.

ThinCompact is especially suitable for high port density applications, enabling up to 48 ports in a single rack unit.

R&M can supply cables of custom lengths –up to 60 meters - and various configurations. ThinCompact is optionally available in Low Smoke Zero Halogen versions that reduce the amount of toxic and corrosive gas emitted if the cable catches fire, something that will appeal to data center designers.

Last month, R&M introduced four-pair Power over Ethernet (PoE) cables, able to deliver up to 100W over local data networks.