A long-standing, highly respected member of the standards community has retired. Arthur Willis, formerly of BICC and more recently Brand-Rex, led the IEC SC86A/WG3 on optical-fiber cables since it was created at Tokyo in 1991. Over the years, the working group, under Arthur’s stewardship, produced a suite of optical-cable standards covering applications as diverse as indoor simplex cords to outdoor duct and buried loose tube cables. These standards are covered in the IEC 60794 optical-fiber cable series. It has been an honor to work with Arthur, and we thank him for his past contributions, direction, dedication, and hard work.
One of the responsibilities of WG3 is to respond to our “customer” standards organizations such as ISO/IEC JTC1 SC25 Interconnection of Information Technology Equipment WG3 Customer Premises Cabling. Recently, five new detailed specifications have been developed for cables containing singlemode and multimode optical fiber. These specifications support the optical-fiber cabling requirements in ISO/IEC 11801 Information Technology - Generic Cabling for Customer Premises. The following specifications are at the final voting stage and should be published soon:
- IEC 60794-3-12 Optical Fibre Cables - Part 3-12 Outdoor Cables - Detailed Specification for Duct and Directly Buried Optical Telecommunication Cables for Use in Premises Cabling
- IEC 60794-3-21 Optical Fibre Cables - Part 3-21 Outdoor Cables - Detailed Specification for Optical Self-Supporting Aerial Telecommunication Cables for Use in Premises Cabling
- IEC 60794-2-11 Optical Fibre Cables - Part 2-11 Indoor Cables - Detailed Specification for Simplex and Duplex Cables for Use in Premises Cabling
- IEC 60794-2-21 Optical Fibre Cables - Part 2-21 Indoor Cables - Detailed Specification for Multi-fibre Optical Distribution Cables for Use in Premises Cabling
- IEC 60794-2-31 Optical Fibre Cables - Part 2-31 Indoor Cables - Detailed Specification for Optical Fibre Ribbon Cables for Use in Premises Cabling
Ros Neat is a consultant at Brand-Rex, a Honeywell company based in Scotland, and interim convenor of IEC SC86A/WG3. She can be reached at [email protected].