This standard specifies minimum requirements for telecommunications cabling within a commercial building, up to and including the telecommunications outlet/connector, and between buildings in a campus environment. It specifies component requirements, cabling distances, telecommunications outlet/connector configurations, and a recommended topology.

Building telecommunications cabling specified by this standard is intended to support a wide range of different commercial building sites and applications (e.g., voice, data, text, video, and image). Typically, this includes sites with a geographical extent up to 3,000 m (approximately 10,000 ft), up to 1,000,000 m² (approximately 10,000,000 ft²) of office space, and with a population of up to 50,000 individual users.

Telecommunications cabling systems specified by this standard are intended to have a useful life in excess of ten years.

This standard applies to the telecommunications cabling systems of buildings for commercial enterprises that are office oriented.