How does the separation rule protect the health and safety of cablers and customers?
The separation of customer cabling from electrical hazardous services is required to avoid creating a dangerous situation resulting from mechanical damage of communications cables. For example: • a customer cable and electrical cable with no separation may suffer simultaneous penetration from nails, screws, drills, saws, sharp objects that may cause a hazardous current to appear on the communications cable; • contact with other hazardous services, such as pipes containing corrosive or flammable liquid, or gas, or of temperatures higher than 60o Celsius will damage customer cables; and • sheath burning (heating effect) of customer cables may occur when they are pulled across other surfaces, causing the sheath and the conductor insulation to melt and compromising the service-simultaneous burning of telecommunications and electrical cables where the sheath and conductor insulation both melt is of the greatest concern. The minimum requirements under the separation rule for LV and HV also h
