This part of IEC 61280 is applicable to the measurement of attenuation and determination of polarity and length of installed multimode and single-mode optical fibre cabling plant, terminated with MPO connectors, using test equipment having an MPO interface. This cabling plant can include multimode or single-mode optical fibres, connectors, adapters, splices, and other passive devices. The cabling can be installed in a variety of environments including residential, commercial, industrial, and data centre premises, as well as outside plant environments.

In this document, the optical fibres that are addressed include sub-categories A1-OMx, where x = 2, 3, 4 and 5 (50/125 μm) multimode optical fibres, as specified in IEC 60793‑2‑10, and category B-652 and B-657 (9/125 μm) single-mode optical fibres, as specified in IEC 60793‑2‑50. The attenuation measurements of the other multimode and single-mode categories can also be made using a light source and power meter (LSPM) or optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) utilising an internal or external optical switch having one MPO interface. Multimode measurements are made with an 850 nm source because transceivers used for parallel optics applications having an MPO interface only operate at 850 nm; 1 300 nm measurements are optional. Single-mode measurements are made with a 1 310 nm and/or 1 550 nm source because transceivers used for parallel optics applications having an MPO interface operate at these wavelengths. This document does not include descriptions of cabling that is not exclusively MPO to MPO.