Structured Cabling is the cabling of a building or a series of buildings with cable (copper and fibre), telecom outlets (TO), floor distributors (FD), building distributors (BD) and campus distributors (CD). The ultimate aim is meet the requirements of all potential users of the building during its lifetime, without the need for re-cabling.

Thanks to a new approach of the building infrastructure, specifically in the domain of pre-cabling, it is now possible to install a universal system that is totally transparent to users - a "universal application independent network".

As a result, the main questions which have to be addressed when installing a Universal Application Independent Network are not the applications to be served, but rather the cabling system itself, the number of buildings, number of floors in each building, the space available, and the distances to be spanned.

Structured cabling offers a hierarchy of cables and distribution points, extending to the various floors of the building(s) to provide a range of networking services to meet a wide variety of needs.

Cabling Systems are designed to cater for the multiple application requirements within a given environment. Due to the requirement to move people within any area of a network, flexibility and scalability are the key issues associated with a "fixed" cabling infrastructure.

Flexibility and scalability are important factors that must be considered, when implementing a cabling infrastructure. Thought must be given to the services not only required today but also in the future. For this reason, existing systems such as the copper coaxial cable associated with Ethernet services has proven to be unsuitable for the range and speed of services likely to be required.

By implementing a structured cabling system, a company can ensure the right support for the multimedia and high speed switching services today and tomorrow's office.

As cabling infrastructures become more structured and "open", their capability to support a varying range of services is forever increasing, allowing consolidation of management and service integration.

A structured and integrated cabling system designed to meet the varied needs of users will be compliant with the new ISO/IEC IS 11801 International Standard (2002) for structured cabling. This defines an "open" and "generic" cabling system that is not restricted to specific applications.