**5. Conclusions**

Arc fusion splicing of most microstructured silica-based fibres to SMFs with conventional equipment and tools is possible, with loss acceptable for purposes like PCF characterization.

Unfortunately, splicing procedure must be tailored to each PCF and is labour intensive. In many cases, a trade-off between achieving low loss and high strength of the splice exists.

PCF to PCF splicing is more demanding in term of equipment and work procedures, because of need for rotational alignment of fibres, not available in most fusion splicing machines, and increased length of collapsed holes. The latter problem can be reduced by adopting fusion time shorter than 0.3 s, but at the expense of compromised splice strength.
