In recent years, the world's telecommunications infrastructure construction is developed at a top speed. One of the important contents is the construction of FTTX. According to CRU reports, the global FTTX construction fiber consumption of 180 million core kilometers in 2018.The total length was about 4,500 laps around the earth, which reached a new peak, and the fiber optic cables used in FTTX PROJECTS accounted for 35% of all cable demand. However, all countries now have encountered major problems in the construction of FTTX: the national conditions vary greatly, and there are no uniform specifications for optical cable facilities. Even, the product’s names are varied in different countries.
The optical fiber cable distribution box, cross connection cabinet and other boxes, like "overpasses", are local hubs of FTTX optical cable network. The international standardization of this boxes is beneficial to ensuring the fiber routing between equipment room, trunk cable, distribution cable and home optical cable smooth and accurate and greatly regulates equipment manufacturing and construction.
Recently, the international standard ITU-T L.208 "Technical Requirements for Passive Optical Nodes: Optical Fiber Cable Distribution Box", was approved at the ITU-T SG15 plenary meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. This standard was jointly dominated by FiberHome. This is the second time that China has led the international standard for ITU-T fiber optic cable facilities after the adoption of ITU-T L.206, which was jointly led by Campfire. China has issued an increasingly strong voice in the work of international standards.
The new standard ITU-T L.208 specifies the general technical requirements for indoor/outdoor optical fiber splitting boxes, including the mechanical and environmental performance of fiber management systems, fiber optic cable accessories, spectroscopic/fusion cabinets, etc. Together with the previously issued ITU-T L.206 "Technical Requirements for Passive Optical Nodes: Outdoor Optical Cable Cross Connection Cabinet" and other international standards, it constitutes a complete standard system of technical requirements for passive optical nodes. The official release and implementation of this series of standards will carry forward the standardization of products related to optical network physical facilities and the unification of design languages around the world, and promote the development of international trade in the communications industry. Since September 2016, a team that contained experts from China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, FiberHome, China Unicom, Belgium Commscope (Commscope Connectivity) and other units successfully promoted the establishment of the L. 208 project and finished the first draft of the standard in June 2017. After three years of discussions and adoption of opinions, the ITU-T L.208 standard was finally jointly formulated.
At this ITU-T SG15 plenary meeting, FiberHome experts got the seat of Editorial board of another international standard ITU-TL.151, "Installation of Optical Fiber Composite Overhead Ground Wire Cable (OPGW)", and will lead the revision of this international standard. The standard ITU-T L.151 was issued in 1998, which stipulated the technical requirements for the installation of OPGW. However, due to the standard was formulated quite early, along with the development of technology, the original part of the content was not perfect enough, some technical detailed requirements were not provided, and the standard couldn’t effectively guide installation during construction. For example, for the force value requirement of cable laying-out, it just recommends that "use appropriate tension" but not points out what the value is. Based on its own technical accumulation and installation experience of OPGW, FiberHome has put forward a number of revision proposals, including pre-installation inspection, construction laying tension, acceptance criteria and content requirements, which were adopted by the meeting and the meeting agreed to initiate the revision project.
FiberHome attaches great importance to the formulation of international standards and has participated in works of almost all influential international and Chinese standards organizations. More than 10 experts, coming from FiberHome, have held many important positions like president, reporter, editor and so on in international standards organizations such as ITU-T, IEEE, OIF, etc. They have led or participated in the formulation of more than 30 international standards, 100 Chinese national standards and 300 Chinese industry standards.
