There are three main standards in place to cover structured network cabling. These are the EIA/TIA 568A Commercial Building Standard; the IS 11801, a generic ISO international cabling standard based on the EIA/TIA 568A and the European market standard, the EN 50173, based closely on the IS 11801. Opus Datacomms complies with all of these standards and we are always at the forefront of industry developments.Cables come in a number of different categories which have been detailed in our portfolio. The industry benchmark is the Cat 5e standard where the "e" stands for enhanced. This standard is capable of achieving data transmission rates of up to 1000Mpbs (100Mhz). Newer standards include CAT 6 (capable of transmission rates of 1000Mpbs/250Mhz and recently ratified) for which the standard EIA/TIA 568B has been developed and CAT 7 (capable of transmission speeds of 6000Mpbs) which is yet to be standardised.

Cable types
There are three main types of cable used in structured cabling installations: UTP, STP and fibre optic. UTP "unshielded twisted pair" is used by most network protocols. STP "shielded twisted pair" is used in place of UTP, in environments which are hostile to UTP. Examples of this could be places of work with excessive noise and areas which have high levels of electromagnetic interference such as hospitals. Fibre optic cable is used for high bandwidth requirements and can be linked using a patch panel to other voice and data networks. It is available in two formats, singlemode and multimode where the latter is used for network communications. Multimode fibre is designed to handle high bandwidth requirements and is compact and easy to install.

We are registered to install the following leading brands of cable