Before it made news with its two recent acquisitions, Belden was one of two companies that announced at the BICSI Winter Conference in late January that it had developed a smaller-diameter Category 6A unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cable. ADC (www.adc.com) made a similar announcement while the conference was being held January 23-25.
The newest generation of Belden’s 10GX cable is 0.295 inches in diameter. The 23-AWG copper cable is available in CMR (riser), CMP (plenum), and LSZH (low-smoke, zero-halogen) versions.
ADC’s next-generation CopperTen Category 6A UTP cable (see page 57) has an average outside diameter of 0.275 inches, the company says. ADC added that the industry average Category 6A UTP cable is 0.31 inches, meaning CopperTen achieves a 22% reduction in cross-sectional area by comparison.
“This reduction in the size of Augmented Category 6 UTP cable will give data center and network managers more flexibility and higher performance for their investment,” says Jaxon Lang, vice president of product management, structured cabling for ADC. “The market has been demanding a smaller Augmented Category 6 UTP cable, and ADC delivered.”
Cabling Installation & Maintenance will track the market to see if other Category 6A UTP manufacturers introduce smaller-diameter versions of the cable.