The first revision of the Telecommunications Industry Association’s (TIA) cabling standard for healthcare facilities soon will be published. TIA-1179-A was approved for publication when the TIA TR-42 Telecommunications Cabling Systems Engineering Committee met the week of June 12. Formally titled ANSI/TIA-1179-A Healthcare Facility Telecommunications Infrastructure, it is the first revision of the original TIA-1179 standard, which was published in 2010.

A key element of the 1179 standard, which is retained in the 1179-A revision, is a table of recommended work-area outlet densities for different areas in a healthcare facility. We have re-created that table here.

While the TIA-1179-A standard was in progress, Legrand North America’s director of eLearning and standards Cindy Montstream updated it and several other TIA standards efforts.

Montstream explained in an article in Cabling Installation & Maintenance magazine, “Significant changes from the previous edition include the following.

• Balanced twisted-pair backbone cabling is now Category 6A minimum
• Balanced twisted-pair horizontal cabling is now Category 6A minimum
• OM4 is the recommended minimum for multimode optical fiber cabling
• A minimum of two fibers are now required for optical fiber backbone cabling
• Array connectors are now permitted for optical fiber cabling in the work area
• MUTOAs and consolidation points may be used as additional network elements
• Requirements were added for: telecommunications pathways and spaces (additional requirements to those in ANSI/TIA-569-D); bonding and grounding; firestopping; broadband coaxial cabling; multi-tenant building spaces
• Recommendations were added for cabling for wireless access points and distributed antenna systems"

Once published, the ANSI/TIA-1179-A standard will be available at the TIA Standards Store via IHS.