Eliminating transition points with CommScope’s plenum copper cables

CommScope recently introduced new indoor/outdoor plenum copper cables that effectively eliminate the need for traditional transition points from outdoor cable to safety listed indoor cables. Indeed, local building codes typically require outside plant cables to transition to indoor safety listed cables within 50 feet of entry into a building.

However, our indoor/outdoor cables – which include Categories 6A and 6 plenum options – enable:

• The use of a single cable
• Cost savings in reduced labor and materials
• Greater design freedom

Typical use cases for our new indoor/outdoor copper cables include slab or below grade conduits, which are considered wet locations and inappropriate for conventional indoor cables that are not designed to withstand moisture. Our new copper cable design performs exceptionally well in both environments – protecting network infrastructure integrity for peak performance, while significantly minimizing costs and reducing installation time.

CLICK TO TWEET: CommScope's Tim Leonhardt highlights new plenum copper cables, effectively eliminating the need for traditional transition points from outdoor cable to safety listed indoor cables within 50 feet of entry into a building.

To be sure, the cables offer a simple solution for wet locations inside the building envelope. A conduit below an interior building floor slab in contact with the earth is considered a ‘wet location.’ It should be noted that there is quite a lot of industry confusion and ambiguity around the definition of an in-building ‘wet location.’ This is because there are multiple installation methods for slab raceways, each with its own merit.

Indeed, many raceways come into contact with the earth and some do not. Traditional indoor plenum and non-plenum category cables aren’t listed or constructed to withstand a lot of moisture; the jackets are semi-permeable, while the moisture can cause corrosion and ultimately lead to cable failures. Such cable failures often present themselves intermittently, making it difficult and costly to identify the root cause.

Additional information about our new indoor/outdoor plenum copper cables is available here and here.

Additional resources:

• CS44P-IO Indoor/Outdoor Category 6A U/UTP Cable
• CS34P-IO Indoor/Outdoor Category 6 U/UTP Cable