This part of IEC 62005 describes a common set of procedures for estimating the reliability of fibre optic connectors, splices, branching devices and other passive components. This part deals specifically with component reliability as estimated from life tests which are accelerated in some manner as in the example of IEC 62005-2.

Since different material systems designed to do the same job will often respond in very different ways to the same stresses, both in terms of the form of the acceleration function, and the statistical distribution of failure times (or degradation observed over time), a normative standard specifying specific methods of acceleration or statistical modeling is inappropriate. Instead, this Part 7 provides a minimal normative standard for presenting data and analyses to support reliability estimates of passive components and an informative portion (bibliography) containing references to more extensive writings on physical and statistical modeling for accelerated testing.