Ron Karjian
"Residential cabling will experience tremendous growth," says Masood A. Shariff, distinguished member of the technical staff at Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ). "The digital revolution will sweep through home electronics equipment, making all connections between vcrs, camcorders, TVs, PCs, and other devices very clear and consistent."
The advent of the Internet as a viable home medium and the gradual shift in workload from corporate offices to small home offices will catapult residential wiring into the serious high-volume end of the cabling business. "The Internet," says Doug Fiske, division manager for amp Inc.`s building systems division (Harrisburg, PA), "is something most homeowners can grasp for both educational and entertainment purposes." Add business purposes to those applications, too, because the number of people expected to work out of their homes will at least quadruple to about 100 million worldwide by the year 2002, reports Mark Fabbi of Gartner Group Inc. (Stamford, CT).
To handle these multifaceted residential/home-office applications, which must connect computers, printers, modems, Ethernet, and Integrated Services Digital Network (isdn) and which demand high-speed and high-bandwidth data transmission as well as telecommunications, Category 5 utp cabling and equipment will be the reasonable choice in terms of cost and performance. Category 5 cabling will be used to create a virtual home lan, so homeowners can plug into any outlet in the house to access bandwidth and the services of any devices on the lan. Currently, several major cabling manufacturers are offering both Category 3 and Category 5 cabling, in combination with coaxial cable, for the home.