DIN EN 50700:2014-05

The broadband initiatives of the German Federal Government and of the European Commission require the expansion of technical infrastructure to comprehensively provide private households with fast internet access. Especially in territorial states like Germany, this is associated with significant investment costs. In the past, both national and regional network operator but also municipalities have implemented solutions in diverse pilot projects for the delivery of broadband services with optical fibres to end-users (so-called fibre to the home (FTTH) which, however, have been only conditionally technically compatible and, due to the lack standardized system provisions, entailed high planning and implementation costs. Therefore, an initiative of the members of the "Informationstechnische Gesellschaft" (ITG, information technology society) of the VDE, the Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies, resulted in the foundation of a working group in 2008 which followed the objective of harmonizing the technical solutions to accelerate broadband coverage, first on a national level and then within the European scope. The members of this working group came from system manufacturers, network operators, planners, the German Federal Network Agency and the German housing industry. The result of this open specification has been published at the end of 2009 as "VDE-Anwendungsregel" (VDE Rules of Application) VDE-AR-E 2800-901 "Informationstechnik - Breitbandkommunikation - Gebäudeanschluss (FTTB) and Wohnungsanschluss (FTTH) an Lichtwellenleiternetze" ("Information Technology - Broadband Communication - Connection of Buildings (FTTB) and Homes (FTTH) to Optical Fiber Networks"). On the German initiative, CLC/TC 215 decided in 2011 the start of a European standardisation project under German governance in which significant parts of the contents of VDE-AR-E 2800-901 have been incorporated. The results of these works are presented in this standard. The European standard specifies the cabling of optical fibre access networks at multiple subscriber premises (which may comprise single or multiple buildings) to support deployment of optical broadband networks. The cabling within the subscriber facilities for onward distribution of services beyond the customer premises equipment is not specified. The cabling defined by this standard supports a wide range of broadband applications delivering services including voice, data, text, image and video. This European Standard specifies: a) the structure and configuration of the optical fibre cabling; b) cabling performance requirements; c) implementation options. The standard does deliberately not specify a complete FTTx cabling to avoid constraints in the infrastructure of the individual network operators; however, in terms of the generic pre-cabling of premises according to the DIN EN 50173 standard series, it standardises a significant part of the distribution access network. Figure 1 exemplarily shows the integration of the cabling specified in this standard into the entire cabling of the transport access network or distribution access network; the last operator connection point (LOC) which, in this case, lies outside the premises may certainly also be within the premises. Thereby, an economically attractive, future-proof cabling for broadband access networks is available which is equally available for all network operators and which allows a fast distribution of the FTTx solutions to the end-users at reasonable investment costs. At least one major German network operator has already decided to apply this standard when investing into fibre optical infrastructure and to implement the standard's approaches in practice. The responsible body is DKE/GUK 715.3 "Informationstechnische Verkabelung von Gebäudekomplexen" ("Information technology cabling of building complexes") of the DKE (German Commission for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies) at DIN and VDE.