Four Types of Telephone Cabling Options That Facilitate Efficient Data Transfers

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Hello, my name is Gary. When I went into business, I didn't have a great deal of money. The lack of funds meant that I had to buy commercial premises which had seen better days. The roof was leaking, the plumbing was causing problems in the bathrooms and the interior walls were in need of repair. Thankfully, my brother loaned me some money so I could call in some contractors to work on the building before I opened it to my customers. The workmen were great, they carried out a quick but professional repair and I was able to open for business. My business is doing really well and I couldn't be happier with the building. I decided to start this blog to offer advice to others who are considering hiring construction contractors.

Four Types of Telephone Cabling Options That Facilitate Efficient Data Transfers

22 February 2017
 Categories: Construction & Contractors, Blog

Telephone cabling is the implementation of structured communication network cables utilised in linking a household or an office telephone with regional telephone switching centres around the globe. Despite the fact that most people use mobile phones for their convenient portability, grounded telephones are still essential for the communication needs of a nation.

Hence, if you intend to install telephone cabling for your home or business, here are the most common cabling options available for you.

Fibre optic cabling

Fibre optic cabling is one of the most popular telephone cabling options currently utilised around the world. An optical fibre cable utilises a soot coated central glass core to reflect a light beam as well as a plasticised colour protection coating.

As opposed to using electrical pulses, fibre optic cables utilise lasers as a mode of data transfer, and hence, electrical interference doesn't pose a problem to the functionality of this type of telephone cabling.

Most data cabling contractors recommend installing fibre optic cabling because of two reasons. One reason is that due to their indifferent to electrical interference, fibre optics can get utilised in areas where conventional copper telephone cables can't. The second reason is that lasers take longer to attenuate compared to electrical signals thus making the cables a perfect telephone cabling solution for long-distance data transfers.

Coaxial telephone cabling

Though considered inferior to fiber optic, coaxial cables are quite common. A coaxial cable is characterised by a single conductor wire (copper) in the centre. The copper wire is then wrapped in a metal shield (consisting of a wire braid and a foil wrap) to minimise the interference levels.

Due to its susceptibility to interference, coaxial cabling doesn't get recommended for long-distance data transfers. Therefore, this type of cabling has recently gotten limited to television systems.

Unshielded Twist pair telephone cabling

Commonly referred to as UTP cables, these cables are quite popular because of their relatively low costs compared to optical fibre and their ease of use. The UTP cables get characterised by twisting four pairs of 22 gauge wires together so as to counter crosstalk (interference).

Nonetheless, UTP cabling is still susceptible to interference from radio and electricity. Though the UTP telephone cables fall much lower in the telephone cabling spectrum, the interference is deemed insufficient to rule them out as a cabling option.

Shielded Twist Pair (STP) telephone cabling

Like the UTP cables, STP cables get characterised by four pairs of wires wrapped around each other. However, individual wire pairs get wrapped with a foil shield, and an extra foil shield is used to wrap the four pairs together. A braided metal shield is also wrapped around the four pair to provide protection from interference.

Due to the multiple shields applied, STP cables are better at minimising interference than UTP cables. However, they are more expensive to set up than the latter.