BICSI Brief

Message From Your Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Regional Director One presentation from the conference, in particular, attracted my attention: "Making the Most of this Infrastructure Moment" from Shirley Bloomfield. It concerned the budget allocated to the deployment of fiber infrastructure in the USA. I'm based in France, where strong fiber deployment started long ago, but also where the COVID crisis accelerated things. Due to the significant increase of people working from home, that quality connection became essential to ensure good working conditions. We're now past 80 percent of households connected, aiming for 95 percent within a couple years, and we've even started removing the copper infrastructure! SOME GOOD THINGS WE DID INCLUDE: • Created the regulatory authority to set the rules: ARCEP. • Created the legal framework to make it happen. At first, we wanted each home to be connected with four fibers to allow up to four service providers. But the cost was too high, and we had to find solutions for fair competition while only having a single fiber to each home. • Created the standard XP-C93-486 defining the architecture of the extension of the service provider cabling (twisted-pair, coaxial, and fiber) into the customer premise, and defining clear responsibilities of each party involved. • Imposed twisted-pair cabling in the homes by regulation with a minimum number of outlets. • Created the standard XP-C93-483 defining the architecture of home cabling, along with a new twisted-pair system allowing not only 10Gbase-T, but also broadcast TV up to 2150MHz. SOME THINGS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER INCLUDE: • No mandatory technician qualification for the installation. This led to significant amounts of mistakes. This still hasn't changed, but a limit to the number of levels of subcontracting is being implemented. • Testing was not mandatory for the home twisted-pair cabling. This, along with a lack of qualifications, was a recipe for disaster. This has since been corrected in the standard, and third-party site verification is being implemented. • Lack of coordinated organization of the patching in the fiber frames done by the technicians of the various service providers. Within only one year, many had become a spaghetti mess and had to be completely redone from the start. Rules are now being implemented. It will be very interesting to see how the various states in the USA implement the fiber deployment. I'm confident that BICSI will have an important role to play on the design, implementation, and technician qualification side. Gautier Humbert, RCDD Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Regional Director Standards Coordinator, Digital Infrastructure, Legrand The BICSI Winter Conference is behind us, and it sure felt good to see everyone in person again. For me, a virtual conference is definitely not the same as an in-person one. I find so much value in face-to-face networking! But I'm sure many of you feel the same way based on the great attendance at all the recent BICSI events. PAGE 20 B I C S I R E G I O N L E T T E R S

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