Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

The structured cabling market has been witnessing technology swings for quite some time now. The erstwhile prevalent Cat 5 standards have been totally replaced by the Cat 5e as the default standard. So far, Cat 5e cabling has been able to take
care of various network application needs of enterprises, but things are changing.

Soon, as newer applications begin pushing the limits of Cat 5e, the standard may not prove a choice good enough. True, some vendors have packed more enhancements into the standard and therefore such installations will be able to service the needs better and longer too, but then that's not going to be a very long-term solution.

In particular, as streaming media applications such as video and multimedia become commonplace and spawn new applications, enterprises will feel the need for the higher bandwidth offered by Cat 6. This is exactly what happened in the early '90s when the higher bandwidth of Cat 5 cabling compared to Cat 3 caused most LAN applications to choose the better media to allow simpler, cost-effective, higher-speed LAN applications such as 100 BASE-TX.

As far as LAN is concerned, standards committees are already working on 10G BASE-T and the fact is that they have ruled out Cat 5e as the underlying support infrastructure. It, therefore, makes sense to plan for Cat 6-based deployments.

The region-wide spread of structured cabling is interesting to watch. In Western Europe in 2002 there was 85 percent deployment of Cat 7 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and fiber outlets accounted for 1.5 percent of total shipments. In North America, there was an early and aggressive market for Cat 6 and fiber outlets were 1.0 percent of total shipments. In Asia-Pacific, 40 percent outlets are in China and there is still a potential of strong growth. Fiber outlets were 0.5 percent of total shipments.

As an encouraging trend, apart from enterprises, more and more builders are incorporating structured cabling into their designs. A survey of targeted US-based residential builders and developers by In-Stat/MDR, which focused on developers' plans to introduce broadband into new communities and builders' plan to introduce structured wiring and other technologies into new and retrofit homes, discovered that approximately 75 percent of developer respondents had introduced broadband access into at least a portion of their new communities. Nearly one third of those respondents that did install structured wiring offered it as a standard in all new homes, and an additional 20 percent offered structured wiring as a standard in certain communities.

Not only are broadband and structured wiring increasingly common, but these solutions are being made available across the board in terms of home prices. Not only are the $1 million properties receiving these solutions, but the sub $250,000 homes are also a principal target. Most builders are using CAT 5 and Coax for specialized wiring projects, although fiber is increasing in usage, especially in high-priced homes.

Nupur Chaturvedi