For many years, the FIA has concentrated its technical activities on the support of data networks over optical fibre. There were good reasons for this, primarily that the bandwidth of multimode optical fibre has been forced ever higher to keep pace with the data transmission rates. The complexity of measuring that bandwidth and, more relevantly, the dramatic change in cabling infrastructure design rules that followed, fully justified the detailed work undertaken by the FIA Technical and Standards Directorates.

However, the convergence of a wide range of services over LAN applications is generating a new group of techologies requiring integration over optical fibre cabling bringing with them new groups of customers and consultants - who are not expert in the base transmission technologies, concepts and definitions. One of these technologies is video transmission.

Historically each video transmission solution came with its own system-specific design rules (in terms of the requirements of the cabling infrastructure), but the impact of temptation of convergence means that the FIA can begin to provide useful application notes.