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The Problem Of Unused Cabling
Makarand writes "Technological advances constantly render functional cable obsolete by
demanding data transfers at higher rates which older cabling cannot
support. New cables that support higher data rates are laid right over older wires.
The old wires are simply left in place and abandoned. This interesting article talks about the
problems
caused by abandoned cabling. According to an estimate several billion feet of
abandoned cable lies unused in the plenum spaces of buildings that allow air to circulate
creating a fire hazard. Also, very few firms currently worry about removing cabling when they
move out of a building."
Leaving ethernet points in = $0
Unfortunately, when the tenant moves out they're going to want to take all their switching equipment with them. That leaves a load of loose wires which may or may not be labelled.
Come time to use wiring in an office you have to search through bundles of cables to find the ones you want. If the cable you find doesn't work you're left wondering if it's incorrectly labelled and comes out somewhere else, or is simply broken. If it's broken you've got the expense of laying in replacements, if it's mislabelled you've an expensive analysis job to undertake.
So, no, using someone else's second-hand wiring is not zero cost.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
I've considered this idea more generally in the past... paying a 'disposal fee' up-front on new goods to pay for their end-of-life costs. There are two problems with this idea:
1: Technology changes, and those end-of-life costs are going to change, sometimes up, sometimes down. This in itself isn't a terrible problem, but it couples into problem 2.
2: Disposal escrow would wind up creating some huge lumps of money. IMHO, whenever there's a huge lump of money, there's also a class of people who will find a way to attach themselves to it and start sucking it dry. In other words, that lump will never survive to do what it was supposed to do - pay disposal costs. Relative to item 1, someone (from that class) will find a 'new technology' to handle disposal and use the fund to develop that new technolgy. Maybe it'll work, maybe not, but odds are that the point will have been to gain access to the money, not to develop technology. Let's presume that 50% of the time the technology falls through, and the money's gone. We're right back where we started, only with a broken promise and either an environmental mess or the need for another government bailout.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
we recently completed a re-cabling job of over 130 drops. somewhere in the neighborhood of 4KM of cable was installed, and about the same was removed. our interconnect charged us about $2400 CAD to remove the old cable, and they did it on a weekend so as not to interrupt our employees.
we've done this in a few areas in our building; removing the old cable each time at a marginal cost.
we remove the old cable mainly because it looks aweful! we are in an old building with no walls in which to hide cables. ladder-racks are used to transport the cable and they would get overcrowded if we were to keep the old stuff around.
what's the point of keeping old, solid-core, CAT5 around? some of it is so brittle that it literally breaks apart if you bend the cable!
plus, our interconnect recycles the cable and gets a few buck back for the copper -- although not much from what i've been told.