A standardised Cable Rating System has been developed to clearly define cabling requirements and aid communication between installers and end users. Jacob Harris explains.

With the rollout of the national broadband network and our relentless march towards higher levels of connectivity, the need for an effective means for installers to communicate cabling requirements to end users is becoming ever more apparent. Additionally, end users themselves need to be able to easily identify the requisite cabling for their requirements as we come to rely on fibre for a growing number of applications.

To this end, industry the Cabling Advisory Group has developed a standardised cable rating system that builds on the Code of Practice for Smart Wiring.

“When people move into a new house they need to know if the cabling in place will support their needs. Not everyone has a high degree of technical knowledge, so they need an easy way to find out,” says Ian.

The system is made up of three readily identifiable categories: Bronze, Silver and Gold.

• Bronze rating level allows speed to 100Mbps and requires that cabling components for communications, entertainment, security (if using twisted pair) and digital home health will be a minimum of Cat 5e and tested to 100MHz with capability to support PoE up to 13W.

• Silver rating level allows speed to 1Gbps and requires cabling components for the above services will be at a minimum of Cat 6 and tested 250MHz with capability to support PoE up to 25W.

• Gold rating level allows speed to 10Gbps and requires cabling components for the above services will be at a minimum of Cat 6A and tested 500MHz with capability to support PoE up to 60W.

Paramount to the efficacy of the system was its simplicity and accessibility. The Code of Practice for Smart Wiring was already in place and contained a lot of the necessary information but the advisory group wanted to extend on that to make the information more easily recognisable.

“A star rating system was suggested but we wanted to make it even simpler. So we thought, ‘why not just take the Code of Practice and add colour to it?’ Then relate that information to the actual speeds communications cabling is tested to and the power it will support,” says Ian Millner an industry consultant who sits in the advisory group.

The idea was to create compliance labels featuring symbols that will make it easy for anyone to enter a house and, on locating the compliance label, understand what level of infrastructure is in the building for services like entertainment and energy management and what level of service they can expect to have delivered over that infrastructure.

“We’re hoping that councils and real estate agencies will start to catch on soon. We expect to see it becoming one of the characteristics that define a house. Not only will you have x number of rooms etc. (the usual symbols you see in the real estate pages) but a listing of the level of functionality of the home.

“People are becoming more discerning of whether or not a dwelling has the necessary requisites to meet their connectivity needs. As more end users begin to recognise the value in it, the industry will see there’s value in it too.”

Another element to be considered is the monitoring of alarm systems and emergency infrastructure in the event of a blackout. When a phone line is the primary source of connectivity in the home (as they commonly are at present), the end user’s alarm system and related monitoring can still send signals to base in a blackout. But once the NBN is the primary provider of connectivity to residences, phone and internet connections will be lost in blackout conditions unless an optional battery backup is installed.

When the requisite cabling is installed in a residence the end user can power alarm systems alongside phone and Internet services with PoE drawn from the battery backup to ensure connectivity is maintained.

“You can have a PoE switch which will connect to the key elements you want to keep up during blackouts so the house can still be monitored,” Ian says.

“More and more technologies are being deployed to support remote monitoring for major services. This is terrific, but if we don’t have the infrastructure to insure those services work under blackout and similar conditions then obviously they lose their efficacy so this is where the importance of a cable rating system comes in.”