When considering wiring for new buildings or adding on to existing spaces, I think the time to seriously consider wireless is now. The guys buying and trading copper see the precious commodity hitting $10,000 a ton. The reason is energy, demand and energy. Energy costs continue to rise, demand isn't slowing and energy shortages continue to befall those that have untapped supplies or those that do have copper available but they just don't have enough energy supplies to produce copper in order to keep up with the global demands.
When considering wiring for new buildings or adding on to existing spaces, I think the time to seriously consider wireless is now. The guys buying and trading copper see the precious commodity hitting $10,000 a ton.
The reason is energy, demand and energy. Energy costs continue to rise, demand isn't slowing and energy shortages continue to befall those that have untapped supplies or those that do have copper available but they just don't have enough energy supplies to produce copper in order to keep up with the global demands.So, what do you do about the rising Costs of Copper?
For installation companies- Hedge. Don't think in terms of buying boxes of wire, but carefully consider buying pallets of wire instead. I've noticed the manufacturing date stamps on the inventory we purchased in February, 2008 was marked October 15, 2007. Prices went up at the end of March, 2008. Factory inventory levels weren't critical, only because of my outer jacket color choice (ORANGE).
For buyers- Go wireless. (Good luck!) Second alternative: buy a color that no one else wants, you may get lucky. Fuchsia? Plan and carefully review any cabling work. Location is key so if you want higher prices, put the IDF or MDF at the end or in an inconvenient location, otherwise think central, because footage matters. Now you're betting between high copper prices against high labor prices, so you can't afford to be ordering too few or too many drops. This is where someone should now be arguing- we can converge our voice and data and save money on new cabling. For those with structured wiring in place- I'll point you to the Phybridge solution. They offer a better hedge against rising cabling (copper) costs and by using their gear, you can power and connect 4 IP telephones on just one Cat3 (subject to assessment) or Cat5/Cat5E (4-pair drop). In the future, I'm going to discuss another really good solution that provides multiple devices using just one drop. Until then, you can look at an old solution from 3Com that uses one drop, but provides more ports at the faceplate and the first port passed through PoE for a phone or other PoE device. For critical links, and this includes switch to switch on your network segments, utilize fiber.
For someone out of work- Get off your dairy air and get into scrap work. Scrap wire is over .90 cents (USD$) a pound at this writing. Oh, yes of course do it legally, because if you can do math, then you can calculate what amount of copper will land you with felony charges if you don't (do it legally).
For cable manufacturers- Research? The cable jackets and polymers are petrol based--- are there any alternatives? We're not to keen on aluminum, so atomic number 29 seems to be the de facto standard for cabling. Will the use of non-petrol based materials lower the cost of cabling? Or, will copper cabling become a thing of the past? Will the cost of copper along with the decreasing petrol supplies make way for fiber and wireless?
For the US government- Save your pennies. I'm saving mine as a bet that the weight of the copper will be worth more than the penny itself. Okay- to amuse the non-believers, of course it depends upon which penny you save!
Building Managers- You need to know that you are sitting on gold mines. There are tons of abandoned wire laying in/on/above your ceilings, hidden inside the walls, and hidden in old or abandoned walker-ducts and raceways. Remove it, cash in and help in the recycling efforts. Just don't cut the wrong wire.
What Not to Do?
Avoid buying cheap imports. I learned in the early 1980s that the variance in copper that is listed as .24 AWG doesn't necessarily mean .24 AWG but could mean .230009 or .231777 or anything between .23 and .24 AWG. Then, there's the quality (purity) of the copper and of course the jacketing, materials used and the twists. Not all cables are the same, there are differences and the biggest differentiator is going to be price, and that should be a starting indicator.
Sidebar- Just Another Wild Tangent?
My concern is that we are seeing a new trend in the SMB/E space. Customers are now "leasing" their entire moves to new office locations. Meaning- installation, cabling, furniture, phones, network, even the refrigerator in the lounge- everything is getting written on the lease- not the office lease- but the lease for everything else. Businesses are financing what seems to be their existence in an office that appears to give them fixed costs for continued operations, minus of course salaries, taxes and utilities (if not provided in the lease), and cost of goods.
Ultimately, the impact on consumers and B2B customers is higher prices. Financing isn't free and the interest on these leases of 3, 5, 7 years on items (Moving expenses, cabling, incidentals related to the move) that customers normally paid out-of-pocket (cash on hand) for, are now being financed.
So, while other people's money (OPM) seems to drying up in the financial sector with another great American rip off from the sub-prime mess (it's not just Americans that were ripped off, either); money is drying up and reversing in affected mutual/retirement funds/savings of individuals- how many and which funds still remains elusive; "write down" is going to be the key term of 2008; the government is throwing pennies from the helicopter to tickle people's fancy with a rebate; over a million US homes are already in foreclosure with many more lining up; and the genius that heads the L-enterprise leading these legal rip-offs (loopholes) always gets paid a premium even when he screws up; and oh yes- American homes (loss of equity) are feeling the pinch too; and to add a little more salt- don't forget to factor in the devaluation of the dollar.
