Recent new project approvals in both the ISO/IEC and TIA structured cabling groups have set the stage to allow interest in the specification of 40 Gb/s transmission-ready twisted-pair cabling requirements to quickly gain momentum.  The early volume of expert contributions related to these projects indicates strong industry commitment and investment in copper-based Ethernet for future higher-speed applications and underscores the technical and commercial viability of these solutions.

At the October, 2011 ISO/IEC 11801 meeting in Melbourne, Australia, the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3 Working Group initiated a New Work Item Proposal (NWIP) to develop requirements for balanced twisted-pair cabling that can support 40 Gb/s data transmission.

Similarly, after initiating a new cabling project to address the need to support greater-than 10 Gb/s transmission in February, 2011, the TIA TR-42.7 Copper Cabling Subcommittee formally adopted baseline objectives for Next Generation Cabling performance in October, 2011.  These parameters are anticipated to be published in addendum 1 to ANSI/TIA-568-C.2 in 2014.

While both the ISO/IEC and TIA initiatives focus on developing a new class or category of copper cabling to support 40 Gb/s transmission, it is interesting to note that ISO/IEC also plans to develop  guidelines describing the 40 Gb/s capacity exhibited by existing classes of cabling.