Will buildings still need IT cabling in the future?

Fewer and fewer people at the office still plug a network cable into their laptop. Employees work mobile, over WiFi, through the cloud and on their smartphone. Does this mean IT cabling is slowly disappearing from buildings?

Probably not. What probably does change is where the cabling runs, what it is used for and how much capacity is demanded of it. The cable at the desk may disappear, while the infrastructure above the ceiling and in the technical rooms is actually carrying a heavier load.

To understand that shift, it helps to look back at how office IT has developed, and then ask the question that is often skipped: where does that wireless connection actually come from?

How office IT has changed

Not so long ago, nearly every workstation had the same fixed setup. Cabling ran visibly to each desk and grew along with the number of employees.

• a fixed telephone connection;
• a fixed network connection;
• multiple copper cables;
• a dedicated desktop computer.

Today the average workday looks different. Many employees work mobile, through laptops, over WiFi, through cloud applications, through video calls and from flexible workstations. The fixed connection at the desk seems to be losing importance as a result.

That picture holds true at the front end. But it raises the question of where all that wireless traffic actually goes, and that question reveals that something different is happening beneath the surface than it appears.

Wireless at the front, cabled at the back

The more wireless an office becomes, the more important the cabled backbone becomes. WiFi does not simply appear out of nowhere. An access point on the ceiling must ultimately be connected to the rest of the building.

• a switch;
• a network;
• an internet connection;
• a backbone;
• often a power supply through Power over Ethernet.

A modern wireless office can therefore need a very high quality cabled infrastructure behind the scenes. The user sees WiFi. The building sees fiber, switches, uplinks, patch panels and ethernet.

That ratio determines how much a building can handle digitally in the future. Anyone who only looks at the workstation misses the part of the infrastructure that makes the difference between a building that can grow along and a building that gets stuck.

The cable at the desk may disappear, but meanwhile more cables are appearing above the ceiling.

Less cable to the desk, more demands on the core

One development is likely to continue: less cabling to every individual workstation. The classic route from internet to switch to cable to desk is making way for a different setup.

Increasingly, traffic runs from the internet through a fiber backbone to a switch, and from there to an access point that serves dozens of users and devices at once. The amount of copper going to desks may decrease as a result, while the demands on the central infrastructure actually increase.

More devices than just laptops

IT infrastructure has long stopped being just for computers. Modern buildings are full of connected systems that communicate over fixed networks or are powered through PoE.

• WiFi access points and cameras;
• access control and sensors;
• building management systems and lighting;
• audiovisual systems, meeting rooms and narrowcasting;
• charging facilities, IoT devices and other smart building applications.

The cable at the desk can therefore disappear, while at the same time more cables are added above the ceiling. The center of gravity of the infrastructure shifts from the workstation to the core of the building.

Fiber is moving further into the building

The growth of data consumption, cloud, AI, video, IoT, smart buildings and higher WiFi speeds means the backbone of a building has to process more and more capacity. For that reason, fiber is moving further into the building.

In practice we see a shift from a single fiber backbone toward concepts such as fiber-to-the-floor, fiber-to-the-zone and sometimes even fiber-to-the-room. Copper does not disappear immediately as a result, but is used more often for shorter connections and for power supply through PoE. What fiber precisely means for a building can be read in the overview on fiber in buildings.

WiFi actually calls for cable

A modern WiFi environment needs enough access points to serve many users and devices at the same time. The faster WiFi becomes, the more important the connection behind the access point becomes.

An access point that can theoretically handle multiple gigabits has little value when the connection to the switch forms the bottleneck. A fast highway exit is of little use when there is a narrow dirt road behind it. Good wireless coverage is therefore primarily a question about the cabling behind it.

And what does 5G or 6G mean?

Can mobile technology such as 5G and future 6G networks replace fixed building cabling? The answer requires nuance. Mobile networks can certainly play a larger role in specific spots.

• redundancy and temporary connections;
• mobile users and specific IoT applications;
• private mobile networks.

But mobile infrastructure also ultimately remains dependent on fixed backhaul, transmission equipment and connections to the wider network. The future is therefore probably not cable or wireless, but cable and wireless, each in the place where it technically works best. The role of 5G in real estate is complementary, not a replacement.

Reliability remains decisive

For certain applications, fixed connections remain attractive. Think of critical business processes, servers, industrial systems, security systems, video and data-intensive or low-latency applications.

A cable often offers predictable capacity, low latency, stability and less interference. As a result, fixed infrastructure is likely to remain part of digitally high performing buildings, even as wireless usage continues to grow. Especially where redundancy is concerned, a second fixed connection is often not a luxury but a requirement.

The real question is changing

The real estate market often asks: how many network connections are there on this floor? In the future, a different question is more relevant: how is the digital infrastructure of this building as a whole designed?

Behind that question lies a series of concrete points that together determine what a building can handle digitally:

• what backbone is in place, and is it copper or fiber?
• how much capacity can it handle, and how old is the cabling?
• how are access points connected and is PoE supported?
• how much room for expansion is there, and how are patch and server rooms set up?
• is there redundancy, and how much digital growth can the building support?

Link this to the digital delivery level

This shows why the statement "CAT6 present" provides insufficient information for the future. A building can have CAT6 and still perform poorly on digital capacity. Conversely, a building may have relatively few connection points at desks, but have an excellent fiber backbone, WiFi infrastructure, redundancy, network architecture and server environment.

That is why it makes more sense to assess real estate not by the number of cables, but by the digital delivery level as a whole. This is exactly what the classification from IT1+ PREMIUM to IT5 SHELL makes clear: not a judgment about good or bad, but a clear picture of what a building is capable of digitally.

The shift can be summed up in three sentences. From counting connection points to measuring digital capacity. From cable per workstation to infrastructure per building. The future of IT cabling may not mean less infrastructure, but smarter infrastructure.

What IT-Label takes into account here

IT-Label therefore looks at the digital building layer as a whole, not at one isolated part. It covers the type of cabling, its quality and age, fiber and backbone, network architecture, WiFi, switches and PoE.

In addition, patch panels, server rooms, redundancy, documentation, expandability and future readiness all factor in. Together these points form the digital growth capacity of a building, in other words the answer to whether the property is AI-proof and whether tomorrow's data consumption fits within it. When buying or leasing, a Digital Due Diligence maps out that situation factually, like a digital MOT for the building.

Think about your digital backbone today

Ten years from now we may barely see a network cable on the desk. But above the ceiling, in the technical rooms and in the backbone of the building, digital infrastructure is likely to become only more important. Because every wireless connection must ultimately go somewhere.

Wireless at the front. Cabled at the back. The more wireless our workplace becomes, the more important the digital backbone of the building becomes. Property owners, tenants, IT parties and real estate professionals therefore do well to think about how future proof the digital infrastructure of their building really is.

A first step is a preliminary inspection that shows where your building stands digitally, followed by insight into the methodology behind IT-Label. For more information, visit www.it-label.com. Together we make visible what is currently still invisible.