The release of the standard, timed to coincide with the annual meeting of the Z136 committee March 17 in Orlando, has been more than 10 years in the making.
“Fiber is going everywhere now,” says Ron Petersen, who spearheaded the team that crafted the guidelines. “With (Verizon) Fios and numerous other systems, and now even for going back and forth between base stations for the switch for cellular telephone, it is being used for absolutely everything.”
Since the early ‘90s, the technology “has evolved from a visionary laboratory technology to a mature industry standard for telecommunication transport,” notes Paul Testagrossa, secretary of the Z136.2 subcommittee and an engineer with Alcatel-Lucent. “This has been made possible with smaller, more powerful laser sources and trends to single-mode from multimode fiber. This has led to more hazard concerns (due to the) higher energy and higher power density associated with these systems.” Continue reading