1. I'm responsible for our company's voice and data cabling. What are my options?

Wow!! Cabling options are wide-ranging and diverse. Depending on your company's voice and data needs, the choices are numerous. There are 6 parts to a company's structured cabling system.

1. The building entrance or MPOE.
2. The equipment / server room.
3. Backbone cabling.
4. The telecommunications closet.
5. Horizontal cabling.
6. Work area / end user.

Td communications can help you in all of these areas. In a typical project, we'll install a feeder cable to the MPOE and tie cables or fiber to the server room. For most of our customers, we install 1 Category 3 cable for voice, and 2 Category 5e cables for network use to each user. In the rapidly changing telecommunications industry, Category 5e has become the cable of choice to accommodate new cabling transmission standards, including Gigabit Ethernet. We normally split the voice cables into 2 RJ11 jacks for flexibility.

2. What products and services do you offer?

We provide everything needed for your complete cabling infrastructure. This includes the cable, the jacks, the patch panels and the voice termination field. We also provide and install open racks, server racks, cable sleeves and cable ladder for wiring closets and server rooms. We will do all the required seismic bracing on the racks that we install. We do not sell or install network equipment, or phone systems.

3. What about fiber?

At most organizations, 80 percent of business is dependent on the network. In the last 5 years, network traffic has increased tremendously. With users sending and receiving graphics-heavy files and multimedia applications, fiber is playing a larger role in many networks. We install, terminate and test multi-mode and single-mode fiber. This includes indoor and outside plant fiber. We've kept abreast of advances in the manufacture, termination and testing standards of fiber optic cable.

More about Fiber

4. How do we extend our dial tone and T-1 circuits?

Along with the horizontal cabling, we install the cables, called "feeders", from your buildings MPOE (minimum point of entry) into your PBX or server room. These cables are usually Category 3 rated and come in increments of 25 pairs, the most common being 100 pair.

5. What type of testing do you do? Do you provide certification reports?

We scan every single cable we install. We use scanners made by Microtest (the best on the market in our humble opinion). We use Penta Scanners for CAT 5 cable, and the new Omni Scanner 2 for CAT 5e and CAT 6 testing. These scanners are periodically calibrated, and updated to assure that the latest standards are utilized. For fiber testing, we use Microtest's Certifiber in conjunction with the Omni. Certification reports are available on disk or in binder form. For voice cables we use a standard pair scanner made by Siemens.

6. Will I receive an As Built Drawing?

Td Communications will provide a CAD cabling floor-plan, provided we can obtain a current background. We use the latest versions of AutoCAD and plot in color.

7. We've never done business with Td Communications before. What our your credentials?

That's a great question! First of all, we are contractors, licensed by the State of California. We are also bonded by the State. We carry full liability insurance and Workman's Comp. We have done business with some of the most prestigious company's in the Silicon Valley including Yahoo!, Web TV and Lucas Films. We are just as proud of some of our smaller, lesser-known clients whom we have been able to help expand (see our Client List). In a time when cabling installation errors account for over 50% of network problems, we are extremely proud of the fact that our call-back rate for cabling repairs is less than .05%. Our technicians are well trained and we take great care to complete all jobs on time.

See our Client List

8. At what point in time do I need to bring the cabling contractors in?

One of the biggest mistakes we see made is contacting the cabling guys too late. Planning for your communications cabling should be done at the same time that you plan for your electrical needs, your construction changes, and your modular furniture. We can assist you in the planning of your cabling infrastructure, provided we are brought into the loop early in the planning process.

9. How can I make sure that the cabling I'm installing now will meet data transmission requirements in the future?

This may sound a little technical, but I'll try to keep it as simple as I can. Since the first cabling standard was introduced in 1991 for unshielded twisted pair (UTP), there has been a series of changes and updates. To keep up with ever increasing network speeds, new transmission specifications have been promoted by the manufacturers and endorsed by the standards community. We've seen network speeds increase from 10 Megabits/sec (10 million bits per second) in the 1980's to 1 Gigabit/sec (1 billion bits per second) in the late 1990's, all over UTP. Today, standards are being discussed for 10 Gigabit/sec. ethernet (although maybe not over copper).

Where to from hear? We could go on for many pages detailing the different discussions about future protocols and standards. The Category 6 standard was finally approved in June of 2002. The current standards require that you install CAT 5e for usable bandwidth up to 100 Mhz. The new Category 6 standard calls for usable bandwidth up to 250 Mhz. Since most of our customers are running 100 Megabit/sec networks at 100 Mhz, we recommend a minimum of CAT 5e cable. Doing so assures that your cabling is ready for most current applications.

Got a question that you don't see listed here? Contact us.