Business Communication Solutions specializes in the design and installation of voice and data cabling networks. Our goal is to provide our clients with excellent, affordable service they can rely on. Give us a call, let us help you save!
Cabling is the core of any telephone and computing systems within your office. Voice and data cabling encompasses Internet access, computers, VoIP telephone systems, voice mail, and other aspects of your communications and computing systems. Please call us to assist you in designing, implementing, and deploying a cabling system that meets your needs.
Types of Voice-Data Cables We Typically Installs
CAT3 Cable– The levels of data categorize cabling systems they can sustain. Category 3, called Cat-3, is an unshielded twisted pair (UTP). Cat 3 traditionally has been used for telephones such as analog, electronic, or digital telephone systems. It is slowly being phased out, although we still have requests to work on these occasionally.
CAT5 Cable– Category 5 (Cat-5) cable is also a twisted pair cable for carrying signals. Cat-5 is used in structured cabling for networks like Ethernet, telephony, and video. Cat 5 is an older version of data cables. Due to the demand for Gigabit data speed, we also see Cat 5 data cables being phased out.
CAT5e Cable– Short for Category 5 Enhanced, Cat-5e network cabling is used as a cabling infrastructure for 10BASE-T (Ethernet), full duplex 100BASE-TX (Fast Ethernet) and 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet, or GbE) networks. Cat 5e is a happy medium between pricing and speed. Cat 5e can run gigabit and save money over Cat 6 data cables.
CAT6 Cable– Short for Category 6, Cat-6 network cabling is used as the cabling infrastructure for 10BASE-T (Ethernet), 100BASE-TX (Fast Ethernet), 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet, or GbE) and 10GBASE-T (10-Gigabit Ethernet, or 10 GbE) networks. Cat 6 is the most common data cable used today because of its standard Gigabit speed.
CAT6A Cable– It can support speeds of up to 10Gbps and frequencies of up to 500 Mhz. It is increasingly more popular as a tie cable between suites or buildings that are less than 100 Meters and a much lower cost to fiber if the distance is relatively short.
CAT6E Cable– Can support speeds of up to 10Gbps and frequencies of up to 600 Mhz. It is increasingly more popular as a tie cable between suites or buildings that are less than 100 Meters and much lower cost to fiber if the distance is pretty short.
COAXIAL Cable– Coaxial cabling is the primary type of cabling used by the cable television industry and is also widely used for computer networks, such as Ethernet. In old buildings that has lots of Coaxial cable, we have seen media converter (from coaxial to ethernet) deploy to setup networks. This scenario typically use when new cables are hard to run due to design of buildings and or business trying to preserve a historical landmark.
Coaxial (TVI – security camera cable with Power cable – Coaxial cabling with power cable are typically use in Security Camera Systems. We offer Coaxial TVI and Data cable installation for home and business. Do you already have your own cameras and just want us to help you with installation, no problem.
Access Control Cable? Access Control System? Are you a security company that needs a licensed subcontractor to help install access control cables in Austin? We offer customized cabling services to help you meet deadlines and budgets. You can call us for a free estimate.
Voice, Data, Coaxial Cabling Troubleshooting Services in Austin
BCS offers voice, data, and coaxial cabling troubleshooting services in Austin. Whether you have one network jack, one telephone, one fax machine, or one TV that doesn’t get a signal, we offer troubleshooting and repair services. Feel free to give us a call for a free estimate.
Voice, Data, Coaxial Cabling Termination Services in Austin
Did you have your home or business prewired? Did you have a vendor who started a job but couldn’t meet deadlines to finish on time? Did you run some cables yourself and need them terminated? Do you need a helping hand with some cabling termination? Call us for a free estimate.
Types of Cable Jacket We Typically Installs
Cable Jacket Type: PVC
PVC jacket types can be used specifically for indoor or outdoor applications. PVC jacket cable can be used in homes and businesses. The application includes but is not limited to the inside warehouses, outdoor installations, inside and outside of homes. Note: PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) emits toxic fumes when burning. Therefore, certain business spaces require the use of plenum cables.
Cable Jacket Type: CMR
CMR-Multifunctional Communications Cable, Riser is constructed of premium PVC and is fire-resistant. Its self-extinguishing capabilities allow it to survive extreme temperatures in any type of setting. To demonstrate that they are sufficiently flame retardant to stop a fire from spreading from one floor to another, CMR-rated cables must pass higher standards of testing. It designates Ethernet cables that may be used in a building’s plenum, such as a dropped ceiling, raised floor, and other air spaces.
Cable Jacket Type: Shielded
Shielded cables are made of insulating conductors covered in a layer of conventional conductor. In settings such as data centers, offices, and factories where computer technology, electrical equipment, or electronic equipment is frequently used, shielded cables serve as a means of protection and signal integrity maintenance against electromagnetic interference exposure.
Cable Jacket Type: Armored
Compared to regular cables, armored cables include a metal protective covering that makes them more appropriate for direct burial. It is especially made for places where corrosion and mechanical damage are common. Armored cables are used to enhance the corrosion resistance and mechanical strength of the cable. It is most suited for direct burial laying in rocky locations and can be laid using any method.
Cable Jacket Type: Aerial
Aerial cables are normally similar to outdoor burial cables, but additionally, they have an extra wire for hanging the cable on a telephone pole, light pole, or the top side of a building.
Cable Jacket Type: Plenum
Plenum jacket cables have teflon jackets, which are considered fire-retardant, so they help minimize fire spread. Plenum cables are usually used in plenum space. What is plenum space? Plenum space can be above ceiling tiles or below floor. It’s the space where air conditioning and HVAC systems are used. Most office buildings that have drop ceilings are required to run plenum cables.
Cable Jacket Type: OSP
OSP-Outside Plant describes all of the hardware, wires, and other infrastructure that is situated outside of a facility. OSP Cable Jacket material is made to endure outside conditions without requiring a flame rating in order to be used within a building greater than fifty feet. You can extend your network outside and cover a sizable campus with OSP’s ability to retain performance in the face of extreme weather conditions, including as flooding, humidity, hot and low temperatures, and tearing and abrasion resistance.
Cable Jacket Type: Unshielded
Unshielded cables are less expensive and simpler to work with than shielded cables because they lack the metallic shield that surrounds them. Homes and offices that require low voltage frequently utilize this kind of connection. Signal deterioration may result from other electrical equipment’ interference with unshielded cables. For most situations where there is no sensitive or important data transfer, short distance cable runs, and no electromagnetic interference (EMI), unshielded cables are a good option.
Cable Jacket Type: Burial
Burial cable is suited for wet, dry, and humid situations and is made to tolerate direct exposure to soil and moisture. It is intended to be buried underground in a trench. A solid thermoplastic sheath surrounds each individual electrical conducting wire inside the cable, keeping moisture out and safeguarding the wires from harm. Direct burial wires are used in a variety of applications, such as fiber optics, irrigation, cathodic protection, pet fencing, phone and other telecommunication cables, running electricity, and tracers wire installations for underground utilities.
Cheap and straightforward vs complex and expensive
Voice and Data cabling can be very simple or very complicated. Depending on what your business requires and how much data you transfer, it will depend on how simple, complex, and expensive it can get.
For example, a restaurant with two chefs and one cash register will likely not require much. They will probably have computers, phones, faxes, printers, and a wireless access point for their guests. This job will be less than a day job in most cases, with very minimum material. Depending on budget, we may run some CAT 5e cables and terminate using male RJ 45 connectors; it can then plug directly into the network devices (phones, printers, routers, network switches, cameras, etc.
On the other hand, let’s say you have a big engineering firm that has 100 employees. Each of these engineers needs to collaborate and have the ability to edit large auto-cad drawings between the servers and their PCs. You will not get away with a Cat 5 or even a Cat 5e data cable. They will most likely all require Cat 6 data and above. Each station may require two or even 4 data cables (1 for phones, 1 for printers, and 2 for DATA. Did I hear someone ask why one engineer needs 2 data ports? Well, I can think of a few reasons. Reason 1 is that you can have double the speed. Keep in mind that there are limitations here. There are a few prerequisites: The PC, network switches, servers, network card, processor, and data cables can support the speed. All these devices must also support bonding (aka link aggregation).
With 100 employees that require 4 data cables each, that’s a minimum of 400 data cables, not including IoT (internet of things), printers, faxes, TV, Conference rooms, credit card machines, wireless access points, etc. As you can imagine, this will require more real estate for all the data cables and a way to manage it. Most likely, these cables are longer data cable runs, too, which will require more labor to install.
It doesn’t matter if you have a small office that needs some cable run or an engineering firm that needs lots of data cables installed; give us a call. Let us help you with your data cabling needs so you can focus on what’s more important to you.
Structured DATA Cabling Installation and services in Austin
We help small business in Austin and surrounding cities.
Business Communication Solutions offers Structured Data Cabling in Austin. We carry a variety brands of patch panel, inserts, jack’s cables to accommodates different customer needs. From different color jacks to different color face plate. We carry different category cables (Cat 3, cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 6a, to Cat 6e. Probably too much to lists. If you want to see more of what we carry, click this link below for a very detail list of what we carry for Structured Data Cablings.
Structured Data Cabling Products
Allworx phone install with data port activated for phones and PC.
This was a job in Austin where we ran some burial underground data/fiber cable to tie 2 buildings together.
Read more from our Voice and Data Cabling BLOG
Data Cabling – FAQ
What is the difference between Cat 3, Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6, and Cat 6a cables?
Cat 3 was used a while back for mostly analog, digital phones, and token ring (10Mbps) network. In the 1990’s 10 Mbps was a lot of speed. Cat 3 is pretty much obsolete now. You still see it in telephone room, d’marc room, some business with analog and digital phone, but mostly abandoned. Cat 5 is the replacement of Cat 3. Cat 5 runs at 100 Mbps, in my opinion is also obsolete, as you it’s hard to find. Cat 5e and Cat6 is the most popular data cables right now. Cat 6 performance is better than Cat 5e, it just cost a little bit more. Depending on your need, Cat 5e suffice. Example, if you just need to run some data cable for a PoE camera, Cat 5e can save you some money, as most camera does not use that much bandwidth. A 4k Camera at 30 FPS use needs roughly 10 Mbps, cat 5e is rated at 1000Mbps. As you can see, there is really not a need for Cat 6 Cable on a single security camera.
I got some quote from different vendor, the the cable prices ranges so much? Why is that?
Cables comes in many different flavors. CMR (PVC) or Plenum. Plenum in short, cost more. Some buildings, require plenum cable, otherwise, it is consider not up to code (NEC code 300.22). Some cables are copper clad Aluminum which is cheaper and the performance is also subpar. If you are needing Data cable, we recommend sticking to solid copper cable.
We have one ethernet jack that doesn’t work, can you help us troubleshoot and fix?
We get this question often. Yes, we can. Just give us a call.
We are in the process of opening a new office and it is currently under-construction, when would be a good time to start pre-wiring?
That’s a good question. Ideally, you should ask this question weeks before the move-in date, if not months ahead. We have seen far too many times that a company moved in and did not plan for any pre-wire or cabling, nor did they have their internet or phone service ordered. Whether you are in the process of moving to a new office or building your building, we recommend planning ahead of time. Example: Some locations can take months, even a year, to install internet services. The best time to start the prewire is right after the wall has come up, the painting still needs to be completed, and the ceiling must be entirely installed. This helps keep the installation time down, which saves you money. Depending on the size and complexity of the floor plan, the bigger the job, the more time it takes.
We have a sporadic data jack that intermittently has issues; what can cause that?
There are so many reasons why data could be running slow or intermittently. Some prevalent issues include, but are not limited to, a Bad jack or insert, loose connection or lousy termination, or bad cable. That’s just the physical layer of the OSI models. If that doesn’t fix the issues, it can be layer 2, a bad network card, network switch, bridges, etc. If layer two doesn’t resolve the issue, move to layer 3; you can have an IP address conflict. If you need help with one or more computer on the network running slow, call us, we offer fast and affordable troubleshooting service.
We need some help with cabling and network in our home, can you help?
Yes, we can; we get this often. We service homes and businesses of all sizes. Whether you need one cable run, fix one jack, or install one wireless access point, there is no job too small for us.
Check out this video by RealPars on what is Ethernet.
Check out this video on Ethernet Cables, UTP vs STP, Straight vs Crossover, Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6,7, and 8 by TECH VIDEOS.