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First Office Systems Ltd
14-16a Albion Road
Tunbridge Wells
Kent TN1 2NH

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First for Office Voice and Data Cabling

Office cabling

Your office cabling infrastructure is absolutely fundamental to your business. It will be running your telephone system and your IT network, of the most important parts to your business, and your business will rely on this for as long as you stay in your premises

We recognize this. We will conduct a full survey and make recommendations on voice and data cabling, which type of cabling should be installed based on distances, routes and containment and the building architecture.

The most common type of cabling installed these days is structured category 5e cabling, also referred to as cat 5 or cat 5e. Installed properly, this will support connection of any device – telephone, fax, modem, bell, cordless phone, PC, Mac, network printer, server, network switch and so on.

The idea of structured cabling is that as long as you have sockets (referred to as outlets) in the right locations and in the correct quantities, you can connect anything anywhere. Devices can easily be re-patched by your staff without any need for engineering visits.

In some instances, it may be preferable to install Category 6 cable, known as Cat 6. Cat 6 works at the same speeds at Cat 5e but offers better network performance. Both Cat 5e and Cat 6 will work to Gigabit speeds, or 1,000Mb in other words. In order to achieve this performance, your computer network switches will have to be able to run at Gb speeds. Most businesses still use 10/100 network switches which run at 100Mb and this is fine for most businesses although more and more people are switching to Gb as they upgrade their PC infrastructure. Note that for a PC to run at Gb speeds, your PC device will need a Gb network card!

Category 6 cable is very unforgiving. In other words, the cables cannot be bent sharply (ie around a 90 degrees corner). Therefore, Cat 6 can normally only be installed in premises with a proper computer floor although this is not always the case.

Sometimes it will be necessary to install fibre optic cabling. This is normally required in larger premises where the cable run from the Communications Cabinet to the required outlet location is more than 90 metres. Fibre is used to connect Communications Cabinets together so the customer still ends up with one network. In these instances, it may also be necessary to install voice cables so that analogue or digital telephone extensions can be linked from one Communications Cabinet to another.

The cost of cabling varies from site to site. However, a guide price for a complete Category 5e structured cabling solution would be from £45 to £85 per outlet (one outlet required per device). Therefore, for a 30 user office requiring say 80 outlets, the price would be between £3,600 and £6,800. This would include a Communications Cabinet, patch panels, patch leads, outlets, back boxes, trunking and containment, labour, a Fluke test.