market
for structured cabling products has remained more or less flat
due to the cautious approach by enterprise buyers in the light of the
slowdown. This was almost evident across all verticals. In terms of
technologies and bandwidth demands, India appeared to be at par with
the developed world. The market became clearly segmented into
commodity products (Cat 5), mainstream products (Cat 6 and Cat 6A),
and emerging products (Cat 7).
On the copper front, enterprises
started to look at the possibility of sustaining 10G over 100 meters.
Vendors also successfully demonstrated this to their customers. The
market progressed towards 10 Gb over Ethernet during FY '10 the last
year, but this remained somewhat confined to datacenter deployments.
Hospitals, remote sensing agencies, and manufacturing organizations
that use CAD/CAM applications with high bandwidth requirements saw
some good business. The hospitality, government, and education sector
also showed growth; telecom too grew with the setting up of new
offices by the new licensed telecom service providers.
On the fiber front, the last year saw an increase in the fiber
content of enterprise networks, particularly with the datacenters
being set up by organizations.
TIA released the TIA-568-C.0/C.1
standard. This replaces the older (but commonly used) TIA-568-B.1
standard and its addenda. The new standard would be a generic
structured cable document emphasizing efficiency and effectiveness.
This will put all common cabling information within a single source,
thereby, allowing cable usage in different types of facilities and
premises within a multi-product/ multi-vendor environment. The new
standards document will also cover cabling requirements, structures,
topologies, distances, installations, performances, and testing.