By Jamey Swigert

The Evolving Roleof Structured Cablingin Modern Buildings

For years, the specter of declining port counts and increasing reliance on
Wi-Fi has cast a pall over the future of the structured cabling industry. While port
counts for traditional LAN devices may continue to decline, new connections arebeing made at a staggering rate, with a multitude of systems, sensors, and solutions
migrating from specialized wiring to a structured cabling infrastructure.
Take heart: the future of the ICT industry has never looked brighter!

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BSRIA, a global
market intelligence

Source: BSRIA, Convergence and digitalization of commercial buildings in the US, May 2017.

agency that tracks
construction andbuilding services,paints a rosy picture
for the structured
cabling industry–
although the pieces
that make up that
picture are quite
different fromthe past. In their
May 2017 report,
Convergence anddigitalization ofcommercial buildings inthe US, BSRIA projects
that as traditional

Figure 1: Distributed Building Services, million nodes/outlets in commercial buildings by type of product, 2015-2021.

LAN connections
disappear, new typesof connections are being added to networks in record
numbers. Applications including lighting, security
and audiovisual are joining the network in large
numbers. This rapid growth in connections will not
only maintain the status quo of the structured cabling
market but promises to push it to new heights.
BSRIA predicts significant growth among connected

shift that continues to pick up momentum today.
The first network camera that ran over Ethernet wasintroduced in 1996, beginning the shift to networked
applications outside of computing. Telephone systems
soon followed suit, bringing a monumental shift
in organizational structure. Telecommunications
departments were merged into IT departments andbuilding systems, with “explosive growth” expected

telephone technicians who grew up on tip-and-ringfor networked lighting (see Figure 1). Three years ago,

were soon learning about VLANs and DHCP.

lighting was virtually nonexistent on the network.

More recently, the concept of a digital building

Today connected lighting is becoming a reality. Within

has spurred an accelerated pace of consolidation onto

the next three years lighting is anticipated to accounta single cabling platform. LED lights fed by Powerfor nearly 2 million connections in the US alone.

over Ethernet (PoE) from the closet switch have
moved from a conceptual idea to major topic ofThe Path to the Digital Building

conversation and that conversation is beginning toMany of us probably do not remember the days

convert to installation. Network connected sensors

when an organization’s network connected desktop

offer the promise of optimizing real estate, improving

computers and that was it. In the mid-1990s, Voice overproductivity, decreasing utility costs and increasing

IP (VoIP) telephones and IP cameras both began therevenues. Badge access, other security, and even life

migration to the IP network. Although early models ofsafety systems have migrated to primarily IP-based

both were limited in their functionality, it began thecommunication over structured cabling.

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Building automation system (BAS) vendors are all•

Direct employees to an open conference room ordeveloping or launching next generation systems thatwork area based on sensor readings throughout

communicate over category cable using IP. Generally,

the building.

BAS connects HVAC, lighting, and security to create•

Turn lights on and off and adjust color andefficiencies based on occupancy, space usage and otherbrightness to personal preferences when accessconditions. Perhaps most significantly, BAS software has

control detects that an employee has entered thethe potential to integrate all these building systems atbuilding.

the software level into a “single pane of glass” that can•Direct occupants to exits during an emergency.

be used by facilities managers to optimize, configure and•

Provide visual alerts to staff if noise levels exceed

manage systems for building owners and occupants.

a pre-set level.

Lighting: The Next Big Thing in BuildingsIntelligent lighting is on track to be the next big
thing in buildings. Intelligent lighting goes well beyond
just lights. Today’s lighting systems all use LEDs forenergy-efficient illumination, but also include sensors
and controls that enable a plethora of capabilities
when those lights and sensors are sharing the network.
Lighting vendors promote systems that:•Turn the lights on when someone enters a room,
count the number of people in the room and thentell the BAS to increase ventilation in that room
based on the number of people.

•Allow building occupants to use their smartphoneor computer to set the lights in their work area
to the brightness and color that makes them
most productive.

•Automatically adjust the brightness and color oflight throughout the day to match natural

Source: Panduit

PoE Lighting goes beyond illumination to add
intelligence to the lighting system in a building.

daylight rhythms.

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In the same way that VoIP drove exciting changes toenterprise telecommunications networks, PoE lighting
is shaping up as the platform that defines new building
capabilities. Because of the sheer volume of lights inan average office building, school, or hospital, lights

Regardless of the architecture used by
the vendor, lighting represents a huge
opportunity for the structured cablingindustry.

become a highly dense framework that is ideal for
deploying sensors throughout the space.
In terms of connectivity, lighting installations varyby vendor. Some systems require a 1:1 port/fixture
ratio, with each light individually connected to theswitch; other vendors offer a node-centric platform,
where multiple lights connect into a node, which thenconnects into the switch. Regardless of the architectureused by the vendor, lighting represents a huge
opportunity for the structured cabling industry.

Industrial: Bringing Ethernet
to the Plant Floor
Looking outside of corporate offices and education

cabling for data networks. On the other, electricians
ran control and signaling cable alongside power in wirebaskets to connect MCC cabinets to PLC and control
cabinets. That delineation has started to blur. IT staff
now venture onto the plant floor to diagnose network
connectivity issues and cabling contractors, who once
avoided the plant floor, are now running optical fiberand copper to manufacturing equipment. The improved
connectivity is leading to higher efficiency and lessdowntime. The advantages of Ethernet and the use ofstructured cabling as a cabling standard can no longer
be ignored.

spaces, infrastructure convergence is also happening
in industrial environments. The factory floor is inthe middle of a migration to Ethernet and structured

A/V: The Next Silo to Fall
A/V is the next technology to collapse onto thecabling. For a long time, there was a hard dividing

LAN. It has moved beyond projectors and pull-downline between the “carpeted space” and the “cementscreens to a sophisticated application with everfloor.” On one side, IT teams managed switches in IDFs

increasing image quality and minimal latency. Today’sand hired structured cabling contractors to install theA/V is equally at home in boardrooms and conference
rooms and classrooms. Use of digital signage is rapidlyincreasing and has moved beyond simply conveying
information to become digital art installations. Outof-home advertising, delivered via cloud-based digital
signage systems, is set to explode, bringing customized,
targeted ads to retail shops, subways, lobbies, gas pumps
and anywhere else a media company can grab yourattention.
The trend to move A/V to the IP network started
more than 10 years ago with the launch of the HDBaseT
chipsets, which convert audio and video signals(along with power, Ethernet, control and later USB)and transmit them across a point-to-point link using
category cable. At the far end, the stream is converted

Source: Panduit

back and connected to a display device using HDMI,

HDBaseT has moved A/V to the IP Network.

switchers scale this technology from a one-to-one

DVI or another preferred A/V connection. HDBaseT

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The expertise, experience and tradecraftthat lives within the ICT world will become
more and more of an asset as A/Vtechnology continues to develop, placing
our industry on a continued growth path.

computer to a ceiling-mounted projector 		
through the cabling closet down the hall? But
with AVoIP, the situation is reversed. The A/Vdevices become just one more network device
like an AP, PoE light, sensor, printer or badge
reader. Another application-specific cable plantis thus collapsed onto a converged category

connection to a many-to-many connection, but thesignals are still traversing a closed A/V network.
A/V’s next generation, which may supplant
HDBaseT in the coming years, is commonly referred toas A/V over IP (AVoIP). It builds upon the HDBaseT
concept by encoding the A/V signals into Ethernet,
routing them across a LAN, and decoding them backfor the display device.
Two variations of A/V over IP are being developed:•An uncompressed 4K signal with zero latency.
This uses lots of bandwidth and requires
a 10G network. However, the hardware isinherently upgradable to 8K and in some cases,
holds the promise of interoperability—
something sorely lacking from the A/V
hardware industry and a bit strange for those ofus coming from the IT/data networking world.

•

Typically proprietary and non-interoperable,using varying degrees of compression toreduce bandwidth requirements to 1G
but with slightly higher latency (often referredto as near-zero latency). These systems benefit
from the ubiquity and lower price of 1G switch
ports in comparison to 10G.

The impact of this next generation of A/Vtechnology is emerging in several ways:••

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cabling infrastructure. One cable plant to rulethem all, so to speak.
With a converged cable plant and more and moreplug-and-play functionality, structured cablingcontractors have begun selling and installing A/V.
Higher average margins, a chance to differentiatethemselves from competitors and the opportunity to
win a larger share of a customer’s wallet are all factors
driving structured cabling contractors into the A/Vworld. Typically starting with very basic applications
and working their way up the stack, cabling contractors
have become a major force in the A/V market. Thishas pushed many established A/V integrators, whotypically have a staff of technicians that are highly
trained and experienced in configuration and controlsystems, to focus on more sophisticated applications
and to develop partnerships with structured cabling
contractors to fulfill the cabling portion of their project.
As resolution transitions from 1080p to 4K—andsoon to 8K—the technical demands of sending zerolatency audio and video packets with low bit error
rate and minimal dropped packets mean that a just“good enough” cable installation is not going to cut
it. Untwisting cable pairs too much at the jack, using
non-compliant products, selecting the wrong category
levels for an application—they will manifest as missing

Whatever devices are attached to a switch will

pixels, audio not synced to its video, screens that black

eventually be managed by the IT department.

out periodically and other issues that will be very

Or at least, IT will be significantly involved inapparent to the end user (much more apparent than aspecifying requirements, evaluating products

few hundred-millisecond delay in retrieving a file fromand influencing a decision.

a storage network, for example). Additionally, all thisWith cabling for HDBaseT devices being mostly

traffic will place more demands on network backbones,

point-to-point, there was a logical case toincreasing the need for optical fiber, a cable media thatkeep A/V cabling as a separate cable plant.

even the more cabling-savvy A/V integrators shy away

Why route the cable connecting a podium

from. The expertise, experience and tradecraft that lives

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If lights become as easy to install andconnect as a wireless access point, it isreasonable to think that system integrators
will begin offering lighting alongside theirnetwork installation services.
within the ICT world will become more and more ofan asset as A/V technology continues to develop,
placing our industry on a continued growth path.

The Human Factor

cabling and communicating using IP. The degree oftraining that will be required to shift the HVAC tradesaway from wiring and communication protocols whichhave been in use for decades will be significant. But it’scoming, and it’s coming fast.

Change Brings Opportunity
Anyone working in a technology industry feels
the pace of change increasing at what can sometimes
seem like a daunting rate. It is almost palpable andcan certainly lead to anxiety about our future, ourprofession and our livelihood, because with significant

In all these cases, the technological shift has causedchange comes winners and losers. The good news

significant changes to the trades involved in installing

for the ICT industry is that we are well positioned toand supporting these systems. Telephone technicians

benefit from the convergence of so many important

employed at large end user organizations are arguably

systems onto the structured cable plant. If we remain

dying out as a profession. Few trade schools train

open to learning new technologies, embrace change

telecommunications technicians any more. Networkand the opportunities it brings, and we maintain theengineers have largely taken over the management ofprofessionalism of our industry through a dedication

IP telephone systems inside organizations.

to installing quality products the right way, our future

The convergence of building applications onto

looks brighter than it has in a very long time.

IP and structured cabling sometimes results in aconvergence of two trades and two markets (e.g., theAUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Jamey Swigert, Senior Business Development

security market). Installers specializing in security

Manager in Panduit’s Enterprise Business, is responsible for strategy

systems have learned about structured cabling anddevelopment and go-to-market planning and execution. Prior to joining

Ethernet. Structured cabling contractors have added

Panduit, Jamey was the Telecommunications Manager for Charleston County

security as an offering and security firms have added

Government where he designed, bid and managed the installation of voice,

LAN cabling to their repertoire.

data and wireless infrastructure for a data center, 911 center, detention

Who will install lighting in 10 years? There is a battle

center and numerous office buildings. Jamey also has experience working

looming to answer that question. Will the electriciansin product management and business development for a global fiber

find a way to protect this important part of their

optic cable manufacturer. Jamey holds a bachelor’s degree in Businesspackage or will the trend towards PoE-fed lights win

Administration from the College of Charleston and a master’s degree inout, likely resulting in an acceleration of electrical firms

International Business from the University of South Carolina. He can be reachedstarting or merging with a low voltage practice? If lights

at jamey.swigert@panduit.com.

become as easy to install and connect as a wirelessaccess point, it is reasonable to think that system
integrators will begin offering lighting alongside their
network installation services.
In addition, the shift coming to the HVAC trade isnothing short of monumental. HVAC and BAS vendors
see the tidal wave of change headed their way but
worry if their tradespeople will be trained and ready to
install and configure systems connected with structured

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