1, Q. Do you have a price per outlet?
A. No. We don’t think it’s fair for our customers with modern, cabling friendly buildings (raised floors and false ceilings) to subsidise our other customers with old and often very beautiful, but much more labour-intensive buildings. Each installation is unique; which is why we survey each one.
2. Q Should we install Category 5E or Category 6 cabling?
A. Category 5E will support all current standards up to a Gigabit per second. Category 6 cabling systems can support up to 10 Gigabits per second.
Category 6 cabling attracts a premium of 20-30% over Category 5E, mainly because it is much more delicate than Category 5E and requires better containment (trunking & cable trays)
3. Q. When should fibre optic cabling be used?
A. Fibre Optic cable is used where electrical separation is required, i.e. where a cable runs between two buildings, Copper cables make very good lightning conductors so these should really only be used internally. No cabling system manufacturer will warranty external copper cables currently.
Fibre is also used where extended distance is required. We can currently run 10 Gigabits per second for up to 10 kilometres
4. Q. What is VOIP (Voice Over IP)?
A. This is where the telephones run over the same network as the computers. It has advantages in that you can use the internet to call between your buildings which is free, however if your network falls over, you have no phones or data. Also call quality is not as good as you would expect from a normal phone. Call centres outside the UK use VOIP as a cheap link to the UK; you may have noticed poor call quality when answering these sorts of calls?
5. Q. Our network doesn’t work very well and we don’t know which port to plug into.
A. It was possibly installed by an electrician or enthusiastic amateur! We can come to site and certify the cables using our test equipment. We will also rewire or replace any connectors, if required and ensure that all ports are correctly labelled and work to the expected standard.
6. Q. Why is it so expensive to install one cable on its own?
A. As we work all over the country, it is usually not possible to get to two sites in a day, therefore we charge our labour by the day. It soon becomes more economic when you have more cables installed. We try to encourage clients to save up a number of cables and get them installed in one day, rather than do one at a time.
7. Q. What area do you cover
A. We work all over the UK including N. Ireland and the far north of Scotland. We have also worked in Dublin, Eire, Prague, Milan, Zurich, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Sergiyev Posad in Russia and the desert in Southern Australia.