sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Plenum Cable vs. Riser Cable: Cost Differential

Can't say that I have. I only have two installs to my name, so, I have a good supply of excess x-connect wire. (a tip of the hat to Ed V. for offering to sell me various cabling products over the years).

I. HATE. BONDED.

What's PCV? Or was that PVC?

PCV is the knock-off cable from China.

Oh right, the stuff where you only get 775 feet in a1000 foot box with arbitrary footage marks?

Counterfeit cable has been a problem. A few years ago, someone found counterfeit cable with copper plated steel conductors. The outer jacket was suspect as well.

Wiring made in China isn't always counterfeit. Commscope, last I knew, moved production of riser-rated cable to China while keeping production of plenum cable in the US.

The upshot was to purchase cable from trusted/authorized sources to minimize the chance of running into substandard product.

The company I'm working for now doesn't stock anything. I mean NOTHING. They buy everything on a per-job basis, and God forbid that I have a system down or need to replace a phone. The customer has to just wait until they order the part, usually from Amazon. It's not uncommon for people to wait a week for a replacement power supply. All they're interested in doing is scaring customers into buying their hosted IP crap. It's a joy being face-to-face with the customer in those instances.

Anyway, the same applies with cable, and they buy the cheapest thing that they can find on Amazon. The last project we did yielded us four boxes of "CAT5e" cable, PVC (there aren't any plenum environments here). The boxes were no-name, no UL, ETL or other approvals, Chinese made and they put mod plugs on each end of the 1,000 foot box. How nice of them. It was terrible. It knotted about every ten feet, so someone had to stand there and pull it out/straighten it for the puller. The jacket was soft and snagged on just about everything. One cable failed completely after installation, with all four pairs being shorted. It couldn't have happened on a simple run. Oh no... It was in a large retail store with 15 foot ceilings, all the way across the place. Their bargain $45.00 Chinese knock-off crap ended up costing the labor for two men to go back and replace the run. Who knows how long the rest of the runs will hold up?

Not quite as bad, but...

Back in the 1980's I was running Service and Installs for the US West Federal POTS contract and one day I was dispatched on an Emergency call to a USDA office in Enterprise, Oregon...about 325 miles away, for a system down. Apparently, the local power company was working on a pole near by when an "oops" happened. The TII Model 428 Transient Voltage Surge Suppressor took the hit and protected the Eagle One KSU.

I removed the protector, plugged the KSU directly into the dedicated/isolated AC. After verify the KSU & Programming was okay I plugged in the bad protector and notified the warehouse that they needed to mail out a new surge suppressor and left for home. That item was not a stock item. We only had them for new installs.

That sounds like us now. "Oh the paging adapter that we always use, no we don't have any spares in stock they are all for installs".

How can cable be sold/used if there is no UL/ETL approval? Wouldn't an inspector fail the job?