Cabling is the least glamorous part of an office fit-out and the most expensive one to redo. Once the ceilings are closed and the partitions painted, nobody thinks about the cables again — until the complaints start. And they rarely sound like cabling problems. They sound like “the Wi-Fi is slow”, “my calls keep dropping” or “the printer disappeared again”.
Why cabling faults are so hard to find
A badly made cable rarely fails completely. It works most of the time, then drops packets when the air-conditioning kicks in, when someone moves a chair, or when the network is busy. Intermittent faults like these send people chasing the wrong things: replacing laptops, resetting routers, blaming the internet provider. The usual culprits are simple:
- Poor terminations — too much untwisted wire at the connector, or loose punch-downs on the patch panel.
- Cables run alongside power lines in the same trunking, picking up interference.
- Cable that has been crushed under furniture, pulled too tight around corners or stapled flat.
- Runs that are longer than the standard allows, because the switch ended up in the wrong room.
- Cheap copper-clad aluminium cable sold as “Cat6”, which runs hot and fails early, especially with powered devices such as access points and IP phones.
What good cabling looks like
Good cabling is boring, and that is the point. For most offices it means Cat6 to every desk, Cat6A where you need higher speeds or a lot of powered equipment, and fibre between floors or buildings. More important than the category is how it is installed:
- Everything ends on a patch panel in a proper rack, not in a tangle behind a desk.
- Every point is labelled at both ends, and the labels match a floor plan.
- Data and power are kept apart, or at least cross at right angles.
- Spare points are planned in, so the next new hire does not need a switch taped under their desk.
- Wireless access points are planned with the cabling, positioned for coverage rather than wherever a cable happened to reach.
Test it, then keep the results
A link light on a switch only tells you that something is connected. It says nothing about whether the cable will carry full speed reliably. Every run should be tested with a proper cable certifier, and the results handed to you. Those test reports are the difference between “we think the cabling is fine” and knowing it is — and they make any future fault much faster to rule in or out.
The shortcuts we see most often
- Small switches daisy-chained under desks to add “just one more point”.
- Patch panels with no labels, so every change starts with tracing cables by hand.
- No documentation at all, because the installer has long since moved on.
- Access points mounted wherever there was a spare cable rather than where the users are.
Before your next fit-out or move
Bring IT into the conversation before the ceilings close, not after. Agree where the rack will live, how many points each area needs, where the access points go and how the building’s power and backup will reach the network equipment. Budget for certification and documentation as part of the job, not an optional extra.
If you are planning a move or already living with a network that misbehaves, our network infrastructure team can survey the site, test what is there and tell you plainly what needs fixing and what can stay.