TIA approves lime green as identifying color for OM5 fiber-optic cable

In Octber 2016, the international cabling standards development body ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission) decided that the nomenclature to be used for wideband multimode fiber (WBMMF) is OM5. In February 2017, a subcommittee within the Telecommunications Industry Association’s (TIA) TR-42 committee (which develops cabling standards primarily used in North America) decided that the jacket color used to visually identify OM5 cable will be lime green.

TIA’s TR-42.12 Optical Fibers and Cables subcommittee approved lime green as the OM5 jacket color in the committee’s meeting that took place the week of February 6. At that time it also approved a project to develop Addendum 2 to the TIA-598-D standard. That addendum will make lime green the official OM5 jacket color.

Several vendors already have introduced OM5 cable in lime green.

As part of its “Connecting the Dots” series of online articles, Legrand published “Connecting WBMMF” in January, in which senior fiber product manager Randy Harris answered several questions about OM5/WBMMF. One question was, “Are the connectors and adapters different for OM5 fiber?” Harris’s response: “Standard multimode connectors and adapters for OM3/OM4 will work with OM5 fibers. The only difference will possibly be the need to change the connector and adapter housings or boot colors to allow easy identification of installed OM5 connections.” Now that lime green has been chosen as the identifying color for OM5, the switchover of some connector and adapter housings/boot colors is likely to commence.