The Role of Structured Cabling in a Future-ready Building


According to an Industry analysis and forecast report published in early 2020 by ‘Industry ARC’, Structured cabling market size is set to grow at a CAGR of 9% during the forecast period 2020-2025 and is projected to reach 20.15 billion USD by 2025.

If we look into Structured cabling from a technology and infrastructure point of view, we’ll get some interesting  key takeaways from the above mentioned report like :

> The increase in demand for high-speed connectivity devices and services due to the acceptance of convergence is fuelling this growth along with the expansion of telecommunication infrastructure as the campus cabling infrastructure is set to play a prominent role.

> The growing acceptance of cabling infrastructure in residential and commercial applications is likely to aid in the market growth of Structured cabling.

> An increase in the adoption of copper cables will increase the market demand for Structured cabling market in the near future. On the other hand, the growing popularity of fiber optic cables is creating a significant number of opportunities for the Structured cabling market during the forecast period.

> The fiber optic cables and their components are anticipated to grow at it’s highest CAGR during 2020-2025 when compared to the copper counterparts. This is mainly to meet the rise in the demand for higher transmission rate as well as bandwidth. 

When we deal with the demanding requirement of integrated voice, data, video, telecommunication applications IoT etc. the cabling infrastructure definitely need to be a structured one.

Unstructured systems usually have a lower initial cost than a well-structured system, but this is a glaring example of how the cheap comes out expensive.

Having known about the significance and necessity of Structured cabling, let’s go a bit more in detail into it.

Structured Cabling is defined as building or campus telecommunications cabling infrastructure that consists of a number of standardized smaller elements/components (hence structured) called subsystems. A structured cabling system is a complete system of cabling and associated hardware, which provides a comprehensive telecommunications infrastructure. This infrastructure serves a wide range of uses, such as to provide telephone service or transmit data through a computer network.

The Major Subsystems of Structured Cabling

1. Entrance Facility

Points in building facility where the cabling from the telephone/network company connects with cabling at the building premises.

2. Equipment Room

The equipment room accommodates the major tools such as servers, cross connects, and the telecommunications equipment for occupants of a building. The nature of this equipment is typically much more complex than that stored in the telecommunications room.

3. Backbone cabling

The backbone cabling consists of all the main cables that interconnect the entrance facility, the equipment room, and the telecommunications closet(s). These 3 components are the back end of the Structured cabling system that are not visible to most occupants of a building, and this cabling acts as a backbone and is why it’s called so!

4. Telecommunications Closet

The telecommunications closet is usually designated for a specific floor of a building, housing the less complex equipment needed for that floor. It is much smaller than the equipment room, and can be thought of as a satellite location of the equipment room. These closets usually store things like panels and switches.

5. Horizontal Cabling

Horizontal cabling runs between the telecommunications closet and the work area. It includes cabling that runs in through the ceiling, parallel to the floor and in the walls to the outlets present in the workspace.

6. Work Area

Finally, where it all matters- the work area!

This is probably what you are sitting at right now! A work area can be a desk, cubicle, office etc. where connection to the structured cabling system is needed via a computer, phone or other devices. This is the final stop in the structured cabling path.