Category What?

C-Tech Program Recognizer The Siemon Company (www.siemon.com) has announced several installations of Category 7 cabling systems.

You heard right: Category 7.

At the TIA, Cat 7 standards are still on the drawing board, but out in the real world, real companies have real needs for the real benefits Cat 7-like performance can offer.

The Delray Medical Center in Palm Beach County, Florida is one such company. For its state-of-the-art imaging center, they chose a Siemon Cat 7 solution.  Radiology Departments can seem like EMI hurricanes to unshielded copper cable, even Cat 6.  Category 7 features foil shielding around each twisted pair and shielding around the whole cable as well.  This construction virtually eliminates crosstalk between pairs up to 600 MHz.  The increased bandwidth can also handle the large files medical imaging systems generate.

Large files and big machines were also the concern of Suddekor LLC, a manufacturer of decorative papers, at their new facility in Agawam, Massachusetts.  Suddekor is a German-based company, and shielded cable is used much more commonly there than in the United States.  Shielded cable seemed a natural for their operations, which feature printing presses as tall as a three-story building, and the high noise immunity of Cat 7, ( sometimes called SSTP—Double Shielded Twisted Pair) seemed to fit the bill.

Suddekor also wanted the bandwidth to bring broadband video, high speed data and voice right to the desktop, and they felt this heaviest-duty of copper solutions was more flexible than optical fiber.

Read the whole story at http://www.siemon.com/us/company/press_releases/04-03-30-delray.asp

and http://www.siemon.com/us/company/case_studies/suddekor.asp

Don’t let anyone tell you copper’s on the way out.  It’s still alive and kicking and solving communications problems around the world.