CENELEC is the European Standardization Organization (ESO) with the task to work on installations and cabling. Therefore many of the standards relating to the physical aspects of installations and cabling can be obtained from them.
However, recent trends in both the choice of transport media (copper wires, coaxial cable, optical fibres etc.) and the multi-media nature of digital data (voice, sound, pictures etc) carried over the cabling has meant that ETSI, CENELEC and CEN are required to collaborate on standardizing and establishing the initial basis for common work in that area. Factors such as reliability, regulation, quality and performance can be examined jointly so that the impact of installations and cabling on communications systems can be better standardized.
The Working Group AT3 (integrated broadband cable and television networks) in TC ATTM is responsible for the creation, development and maintenance of Standards and other ETSI deliverables related to integrated broadband cable and television networks Technologies.
Relevant work is also being carried out in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) Study Groups SG 5 and SG6.
Regulatory principles such as co-location and unbundling need to be satisfied and European regulation requires a network operator to offer support to other network operators or service providers (interconnected or linked by an unbundling relationship).