As we previously reported, a task group within the TIA’s TR-42.1 Subcommittee on Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling has made progress on a project to develop a standard for cabling systems in educational facilities.
Since the time of that report six months ago, we have learned that the eventual fruit of the Educational Facilities Task Group’s work—which will be the TIA-4966 standard covering telecommunications systems for educational facilities—will include an informative annex covering distributed antenna systems (DAS). The TIA-4966 standard is currently going through the balloting process.
In its current form, the annex to TIA-4966 is approximately three pages in length. It discusses DAS, includes a generalized diagram of a DAS, and discusses the components and media types frequently used in a DAS. As an informative annex, it is not part of the standard “proper” and once published, it will not have the same “rule of enforcement,” so to speak, that the specifications contained within TIA-4966 will have.
At its February 2013 meeting,TR-42.1 agreed to rename the Educational Facilities Task Group the DAS Task Group. So essentially (or perhaps exactly) the same group of contributors that kicked off the TIA-4966 standards process is now focusing specifically on DAS. As of February, the DAS Task Group was in an information-gathering phase and had not created a draft document.
Separately, a different task group is working to revise the document TSB-162 Telecommunications Cabling Guidelines for Wireless Access Points. The TSB-162 Revision Task Group recommended, and TR-42.1 agreed, to keep itself separate from the DAS Task Group. A draft revision of TSB-162 has been created and, as of mid-March, is in the earliest stages of balloting.
We will continue to track and update you on these wireless-related standards developments.
