How do we compare quotes between vendors?
What should I Look for on the contacts?
We get many calls a year from customers who hired an electrician to run their data network. So many times one of two things happen, or worse both happen at the same time.
- The Electrican will charge you simular pricing to a Data Cable Contractor, but will not terminate both ends.
- The Electrician will terminate both ends however, did not plan well on the network installation, making the install not useful at all.
Consider 3 recent situations we ran into with the wrong Contractor being selected for Data Cabling and Structured Cabling Installation.
Situation #1 Cables to nowhere
Recently, we were called to a renovated house which had Ethernet ports in all the rooms. The Leasing agent said they just remodeled the house so that internet could be in every room. However, they could not get it to work. When we looked more carefully, while there were Cat 5e Wall ports, when we removed one from the wall, no wires were terminated to these jacks. Add to the insult, the wires they ran in the wall were actually CAT 3.
Cat 3 cabling was virtually abandoned in the 1990’s for CAT5 cable. That cable is only a 4 wire / 2 pair cabling that is not a twisted pair. It will not work for a computer network at all.
Looking further, we wanted to see the Network room locations, only to find out that the cables all went outside the house and were coiled up, just hanging outside the house.
Not only was it the wrong wires, but the wires did not go anywhere useful, either for a 1990 phone, but certainly not even for a computer network. At the end of the day, the owner of this house paid for an installation, that would simply not work for any purpose at all.
Situation #2 – No Network Planning
In another case, our client called us who had his custom home built recently. Somehow in the process of this design build, he was under the understanding that his electrician was going to be running all the data and phone lines for him. The electrician did run CAT 6 wires to each room, though some of these locations were less than ideal locations. Where the data port was, was not anywhere near where a desk could be setup. Many of them ended up behind open doors.
In the end the electrician apparently has no intention of terminating them in the electrical room. So when he signed off on the job, the wires were run, and terminated into plate covers. However, there was still no terminations on the other end. He did not leave any labels on either end of the cables.
So we came into a bundle of 50 cables for phone data and coax, with no labels. They were not even grouped together per room. This meant that our first job was to tone out all the cables, find them in the network room, and label both ends. Then we had to build a network rack, and terminate these cables. Lastly we need to then test all of them. The cost to the homeowner was nearly the same cost of what we would have charged them anyway had we did the whole job.
Beyond that, Those wires were run together with electrical wires. This meant that the phone lines all had a hum in them from the A/C Current. Whoever it was that ran these did not understand the effects of AC current on Tel/Data cabling. This also effected the overall throughput of the network. That ac hum created interference on the data side as well. The cabling did certify however it was much lower performance then it should actually have seen.
Situation #3 – Summer Help / Double the Cost
We felt really bad for this client. They had hired an employees’ teenage kid who was on summer break, to run cables for their new network. He had no experience running cables. But they all figured, “how hard could it be? After all its just a cable.”
First issue was It took him all summer which racked up a lot of payroll for him to tinker around with this project. Then Top it off that he never completed the project before he had to return to high school.
When the client ultimately called us in, most of what he had run was not up to building codes and would have to be removed. Not only did they spend money on cables they couldn’t use, but they also had to pay for it to be removed. The cost of hiring someone with no skills is very high in the end, if all the work needs to be redone.
What questions should you ask of your prospective contractor?
- It is always a good idea to make sure you have a written quote that spells out what will and wont be completed, and what the time limit for this installation would be.
- Make sure the contractor is properly registered with the state / county, licensed and insured
- Will they terminate both ends of the cables?
- Will they test the network cables, for length, sku, speed test, etc.
We always suggest that you select a company that knows computer networking. Some cabling contractors do not really understand what a good network needs, as they just simply install wire. This is critical to getting a good network installation.
A wire map should be provided to you which shows the location of each network cable (or DROP) what its cable number will be, and where that cable goes back to.
Each wall plate should be labeled in such a way as to be able to find this cable in the network room. Sometimes this is simply a port number, such as “Data 003”. In much larger installs this lable may need to be much more complicated in format, to indicate which network room, which rack, which patch panel this port goes back to.
The items above are so important, because in the end, once you need to trace anything on your network out, you will need this careful labling and floor plans to figure out where these cables go and to provide further trouble shooting.
Charlotte Data Cabling takes great pride in their work. We have specialized techs who know and understand IT and computer networking. This adds a value to the work we preform. We understand what the end result is, and what sort of things need to be avoided in the installation. We will always try to do the best quality job. Our quoting process is very complete. We try to keep our work on our pricing. This means that the majority of our estimates are right on the mark with the final invoice, less any customer changes along the way.
Feel free to give us a call and see how we can help you properly plan your next project
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