Rapid information transmission has become of primary importance in modern society. Increasing the level of information that is immediately available in the home or business has become a key driver for telecommunications technologies. The industry continues to develop technology to meet the ever increasing internet demand and provide low cost broadband capability. Photonics and transmission through optical fibres has become a prime technology base to provide current communication networks and will continue to be for foreseeable future networks. We are approaching the ‘capacity crunch’ very quickly and alternative methods will be required to continue to meet the ever increasing demand for bandwidth. A range of strategies are being developed by researchers throughout the world which include, different coding formats, increased data rates, novel fibres and novel transmission systems. These advanced optical fibre networks need to manipulate light within the fibre effectively, and a range of components offering different functionality have been developed. In support of this growing market test and measurement instrumentation is being continuously developed to measure, component parts and full systems. The single mode optical fibre supports two polarization modes, which has been exploited in polarization multiplexed systems to increase fibre capacity, but for high bit rate >40Gbit/s systems it can degrade the optical signal through PMD (Polarization Mode Dispersion). This project is targeted at optical fibre instrumentation to control and analyse the state of polarization of the light within the fibre. It will take a modular approach for a range of instrumentation to measure the polarization properties of components and systems. Based on advanced passive all-fibre components Phoenix will develop PC controllable instruments to modify, measure and control the state of polarization.