While the trend for industry is to go ‘wireless’, cables remain essential parts of the backbone of all communication systems. For this reason, they need to continuously evolve to offer greater speed and quality, as well as support the ever-higher demands of the overall communication system.
CLC/TC 20 'Electric Cables' develops European Standards in the field of insulated conductors, cables and flexible cords and their accessories, for both low and high voltage with the exception of telecommunication wires and cables. Under its umbrella, CENELEC published among others EN 50305:2020 ‘Railway applications - Railway rolling stock cables having special fire performance - Test methods’ and EN 50397-1:2020 ‘Covered conductors for overhead lines and the related accessories for rated voltages above 1 kV AC and not exceeding 36 kV AC - Part 1: Covered conductors’.
Another important TC in the Cables sector is CLC/TC 46X 'Communication cables', which develops standards related to wires, symmetric or coaxial cables and waveguides with metallic conductors for use in telecommunication, to satisfy the advances in developing technologies, like the new 5G networks. In 2020, CLC/TC 46X further worked on the EN 50288 series on multi-element metallic cables used in analogue and digital communication and control; the EN 50117 series on Coaxial cables; EN 50290 on Communication cables, focusing on common design rules and construction, the EN IEC 62153 series on Test methods for metallic cables and other passive components and the EN IEC 62037 series on Passive RF and microwave devices, intermodulation level measurement.
In the domain of Optical cables, CLC/TC 86A ‘Optical fibres and optical fibre cables’ finalized several parts in the EN IEC 60794-6 series on 'Optical fibres cables’, with specifications on indoor-outdoor cable.
