Paul,
He may be referring to this from strictly a "best practices" or "standard" that BICSI adheres to.
6.3.4. Description of Grade 2
Grade 2 wiring supports advanced telecommunications applications such as high-speed Local Area
Networks (LANs), multimedia, Internet etc and is recommended for a “Smart House”.
The basic requirements for Grade 2 residential cabling systems are summarized in the Table 2.
Feature
Description
Supported Services: Telephone, fax, modem;
Satellite TV;
Cable and Antenna Television;
Data (up to 1000 Mbit/s with Category 5E cabling,
up to 10Gbit/s with Category 6 cabling*).
Video monitoring;
Video intercom and teleconferencing;
Other multimedia applications.
*-10GBit/s based on IEEE standards no yet
approved at the time of this publication VCR , DVD
and laser disc output distribution;
Recognized Cable Types: Category 5E (CAT5E) 4-pair UTP cable and
components;
Category 6 (CAT6) 4-pair UTP cable and
components;
75-Ohm RG-6 coaxial cable and components.
75-Ohm RG59 coaxial cable for closed-circuit
television (CCTV, commonly referred to as security
video) only;
Fiber optic cables and components (50/125µm;
62.5/125µm multimode as well as singlemode)
Topology:
Star.
Minimum requirements per outlet location: 2 x 4-pair Category 5E UTP cable
(Category 6 recommended);
2 x 75-Ohm RG-6 coaxial cable;
1 x 2-fiber optical fiber cable (optional).
Table 2 Features of Grade 2 Wiring
Look at
cabledesign.com for more info
Certification of cable is done with a Tester the likes of Fluke or WaveTech to ensure headroom and other things already mentioned by others.
Hope this helps a little