A New Work Item Proposal (NWIP) was agreed to be initiated by ISO/IEC JTC1 SC25 WG3 in February, 2013 at the Working Group’s Ixtapa, Mexico meeting.  The NWIP will include the development of 2 new cabling systems.  These systems will be based on the work currently being done in the development of the technical report entitled “ISO/IEC 11801-99-1 Guidance for balanced cabling in support of at least 40 GBit/s data transmission”.

It was agreed to name the two new systems Class I and Class II.  The new Classes will be included in the 3^rd edition of ISO/IEC 11801.  The Working Group has not yet decided exactly how to incorporate the new Classes into the 11801 series.  This will be discussed in more detail at the next meeting in September 2013.

To support the new systems, the components need to be named and specified.  The Working Group has decided that Category 8.1 components will be specified to support channel Class I.  Category 8.1 components shall be backwards compatible and interoperable with Category 6A components.  Category 8.2 components will be specified to support channel Class II.  These components will be an extension of Category 7A components.

The next meeting of ISO/IEC JTC1 SC25 WG3 will occur the week of September 30, 2013, in Sweden.  Brian Celella actively participates in the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3 Working Group and we will keep you advised when significant milestones are reached.