Cabling, Wi-Fi, fibre and VoIP FAQs — answers, no fluff.

Cat6A is our default for new installations. It gives 10-gig headroom to the full 100 metres and properly supports higher-power PoE and Wi-Fi 6/6E/7 access points — the larger conductors dissipate heat better in dense bundles, which matters more than raw speed in most buildings.

Cat6 remains reasonable for low-density commercial areas where budget is the binding constraint. More detail on our structured cabling page.

Rarely. Most sites need a specific set of runs replacing rather than a full re-cable — often the backbone, or one area that's been extended piecemeal over the years. We certification-test first and replace what genuinely fails. Full rip-and-replace is the most expensive answer and it's seldom the right one.

The standards allow 90 metres of fixed horizontal cable plus 10 metres of patch leads. Beyond that, signal degradation makes performance unreliable. In a large warehouse or manufacturing hall this constraint drives the whole design — you can't serve a big building from one comms room, so the fibre backbone and the position of intermediate cabinets have to be planned before anything is pulled.

Approved systems carry manufacturer warranty cover of between fifteen and twenty-five years depending on the specification. That cover is conditional — the installation has to be carried out by an accredited installer, certified with calibrated test equipment and properly documented.

We do all three as standard and register the warranty on completion, so it's actually available to you rather than theoretically available.

A predictive survey models coverage and capacity from your building drawings before anything is installed. It's worth doing for new builds, refits, warehouses, or any site where performance is inconsistent and nobody's sure why.

We validate on site afterwards to prove the real-world result matches the model. See enterprise Wi-Fi for the full process.

Yes. We walk-test the site, then adjust channels, transmit power and band-steering, identify interference sources and hand over updated heat-maps with a short tuning report. A predictive model is a design tool, not proof — the validation survey is the proof.

It depends on floor area, construction, device density and what those devices actually do — a warehouse full of scanners behaves very differently to a meeting-heavy office. The survey produces a defensible count and placement rather than a guess.

Worth knowing: more access points is not automatically better coverage. Too many radios in the same space creates interference and can make performance worse.

It's a lot of what we do. High-racked, high-interference and industrial spaces need careful access point placement, antenna selection and channel planning, and they need surveying with racking loaded rather than empty — an empty warehouse gives you a heat-map that bears no relation to how the building actually behaves.

OTDR verifies splice quality and end-to-end loss, and pinpoints faults by distance along the cable. The results form part of your handover pack, which makes future fault-finding fast — when something fails at three in the morning, whoever's fixing it can read the network rather than reverse-engineer it.

Single-mode for long runs, external routes and anything with a genuine long-term horizon. Multimode is perfectly adequate for shorter inter-cabinet links where the cost saving is real. We specify from drawings and growth plans rather than defaulting to one or the other — details on the fibre optics page.

Typically 45 to 90 days, driven mainly by distance to the nearest point of presence and whether any civils work is needed. FTTP is considerably quicker at around two to six weeks. If the timescale doesn't work, a point to point wireless link can often bridge the gap in days.

The UK's traditional PSTN and ISDN telephone network is being retired, with the process completing on 31 January 2027. After that, analogue and ISDN lines stop working and every business phone system has to run over IP.

If you're still on an ISDN or analogue platform, this affects you and the sensible time to move is well before the deadline rather than in the queue alongside everyone else. See VoIP phone systems.

Yes. We stage the new platform in parallel, port numbers in a low-risk window and train users ahead of the cutover, with interim call forwarding keeping you reachable throughout. Number porting is the part with a lead time attached, so it gets planned first.

We design for it: 4G or 5G backup, call-route failover to mobiles, and desktop or mobile softphones so people can keep working. A UPS on the PoE switches and router is strongly recommended — a power cut takes out IP phones in a way it never did with analogue.

Yes. We specify room kits that support native clients or bring-your-own-device over HDMI and USB-C, with microphone coverage and DSP tuned to the room and simple touch control. See AV and conferencing.

By how the room is actually used rather than by a product list. Display size to the room dimensions, microphone coverage to the seating layout, camera framing to the table, and a control approach simple enough that anyone can walk in and start a call without help.

The measure of a good install isn't the handover photos — it's whether anyone needs to phone us in month three. Larger builds are covered on our conference rooms page.

Yes. We're programme-led and phase works out of hours where the site can't take disruption. RAMS, permits and method statements are provided as standard, and our engineers carry CSCS, ECS, IPAF and PASMA — so there are no hold-ups at induction.

Most of our work is on sites that can't stop. Cutovers are staged so the existing system stays live until the new one is tested and proven, and works are phased zone by zone rather than taking whole areas out at once. On production sites we plan around shutdown windows rather than expecting the site to plan around us.

Certification test results for every link, OTDR traces on fibre, labelling schedules, cabinet elevations and as-built drawings. If an installer can't hand over certification results per link, there's no evidence the system meets the standard it was specified to — and no manufacturer warranty either.

We're based in Burnley and work across Lancashire, Greater Manchester and the wider North West, with UK-wide delivery for larger projects. Warehouses, manufacturing, offices, education, healthcare, logistics and construction — wherever the job is.

Fixed proposals are produced from drawings plus a short discovery call or site survey. Simple works can often be priced the same day; larger projects follow quickly after a site visit. Send drawings and you'll get a faster, more accurate number.

Less than people expect goes on the cable itself. The main drivers are containment (whether tray and trunking already exist), route difficulty and access, working conditions such as out-of-hours or shutdown working, and whether cabinets and active equipment are in or out of scope.

When comparing quotes, check they're for the same specification — a lower price per point is often a lower cable category, no certification testing, or containment excluded.

Yes — planned visits, firmware updates, moves and changes, and named engineers with response times agreed up front. We maintain an asset register and site notes so whoever attends already knows the site.

Regularly. We audit what's there, test what's questionable, tidy the cabinets and patching, produce the documentation that's usually missing, and upgrade only the parts that genuinely need it. The most common gap we find on inherited installations is no certification results — which means no warranty and no evidence of what was actually delivered.

Yes, and a significant share of our work is delivered that way. We work white-label for M&E contractors, principal contractors and IT providers — unbranded workwear, working to your programme, with the certified test packs and paperwork you need for your own client handover. Your client stays your client.

Full details on our trade and subcontract page.

Yes. Fusion splicers, OTDRs and Fluke DSX testers are expensive to buy and expensive to keep calibrated, and plenty of contractors would rather not carry that kit in-house for a handful of jobs a year. We attend, splice, terminate, test and hand you the PDF test pack under your name.