Electro/Telecom Industry Trends
Connecting the World
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The past decade has seen a tremendous growth in cabling systems and networks. As networking demands escalate, new systems and applications are being introduced to rise to the challenge. These new systems are dramatically changing the pace and the way communication is transacted; transactions that are only possible through the development of standards and technologies. These standards and the people who are working to develop them are literally erasing borders and connecting the world.
Meet John Siemon, Vice President of Engineering for The Siemon Company and a professional who has been in development of connection systems for copper and optical fiber systems and their standards since 1982. In his capacity with Siemon, John focuses on corporate engineering, training, technical support and quality assurance. John is the Chairman of TIA TR42.1, a subcommittee responsible for commercial, industrial and building automation cabling. He is also Chairman of the U.S. advisory group on international cabling standards (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG3) and chairs the BICSI Technical Information and Methods Committee, a group responsible for a series of educational publications in the areas of Telecommunication Distribution Methods, Local Area Networks, Installation and more.
During his tenure with the industry, John has seen numerous changes. "In the past, telecommunications cabling was controlled by computer equipment manufacturers," John recalls. "The industry experienced quite a degree of fragmentation and everyone had to develop and maintain proprietary systems," he continued. "Therefore, any new application required a new cabling media and anytime an organization needed to change equipment or vendors, it would create a great deal of strife within the building." The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), and a consortium of leading telecommunications companies recognized the need to define a cost-effective, efficient cabling system that would support the widest possible range of applications and equipment. Hence, the Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling Standard (TIA/EIA-568) was developed.
The initial cabling standard was released and additional standards documents covering pathways and spaces, administration, cables and connecting hardware were subsequently released. "Even after the initial release of the TIA/EIA-568, there was a great deal of fragmentation within the standards, they just weren't being developed as a coherent piece with everything fitting together," Siemon commented. "Now, we're working smarter and looking at a full system and taking into consideration next generation application requirements."
As the standards approval process can take several years, the competitive environment of the telecommunications industry drives most players to start developing their products at the same time the standards are being developed. For example, the latest version of the Building Cabling Standard, TIA/EIA-568B is going through the balloting process and will eventually supercede the existing document, TIA/EIA-568A. However, until the 568B standard is approved, the existing 568A standard is still releasing new amendments (i.e. TIA/EIA-568A-5 - Transmission Performance Specifications for 4-pair 100 Ohm Category 5e Cabling).
Compatibility problems can be a major setback for cabling systems and networks. Therefore, standards committees are striving to attain a higher degree of worldwide representation and establishing liasons with parallel standards committees from other countries in order to create common standards and methodologies. "I consider it a primary goal to have a driven level of international harmonization," John states. "It is important to create a bilateral exchange of information with the experts in our respective fields for various regions," he continues. "The U.S. advisory group is intended to carry on the good work that has been done in TIA for possible adoption on an international level and also to carry valuable feedback and research done outside of the U.S. to TIA for consideration and hopefully, adoption there."
Today, as the acceptance of standard-compliant structured cabling has grown, the price of installed networking equipment has dropped and performance has exponentially increased. The physical layer has evolved into an affordable bandwidth-rich business resource. "This is a very positive trend and the key to having a healthy market," John commented. "The industry is getting great benefits from standardization. Everyone is driven to reach a common goal and that's the spirit upon which our economy is based."