AU Regulations on LAN Cabling?

An anonymous reader asks: "After getting a ridiculous quote for the cost of rewiring an office, I started investigating the possibility of doing all the phone/data cabling myself. About 40 RJ-45 ports all coming back to a central patch panel that would be patched into the phone or data switch as needed. My research found that doing this simple job would be illegal in Australia, according to the Australian Communications Authority's (ACA) website. According to them, they have the right to walk in at any time and demand an audit of your LAN, and if it was not installed by a registered cabler, you can be fined up to $13,000. My question is, how does this compare to legislation in other parts of the world? Also, has anyone in Australia ever been subject to one of these 'cabling audits'? Was it painful?"

Comments

Sounds like Pro-Union Legislation

[MikeDawg]

What it sounds like to me is that Australia has some pro-union legislation in place. I'm not familiar with Australia, or the job force down there; but after reading this article it sounds like there are some unions down there that got some legislation passed in their favor.

Re:Sounds like Pro-Union Legislation

[gl4ss]

exactly.

though, is it just for permanent installations? make yours 'non-permanent'... in other words, just leave the cables on the floor in one big mess.

and see how easy it would be to register yourself as a cabler..

Re:Sounds like Pro-Union Legislation

[Sparr0]

This is a perfect example of why groups of people should not be allowed to exert political influence, and how unions can turn bad (since, in their basic form (group bargaining for employment benefits), a union is a great thing).

Re:Sounds like Pro-Union Legislation

[4of12]

This is a perfect example of why groups of people should not be allowed to exert political influence, and how unions can turn bad (since, in their basic form (group bargaining for employment benefits), a union is a great thing).

I'd be more broad minded in my criticism.

Yes, unions can act badly, creating this obvious market inefficiency due to their aggregated power in the labor-selling marketplace.

But, just as concentrated power in the labor market can be bad, there are at least as many if not more examples of where market dominance by corporations cause inherent inefficiencies in the free market system.

The most efficient system is where there aer large numbers of buyers and sellers of labor (or anything else). As the number of either decreases, then one or the other side are in a position to take advantage of the market for their own gain, be they unions or employers.

In my world, the intersecting set of employees and stockholders would be much larger than it is today.

Re:Sounds like Pro-Union Legislation

[rmarll]

and see how easy it would be to register yourself as a cabler..

ding ding ding

Or...

Go wireless

Or...

Find a cable installer that works in a large company and pay your new buddy a reasonable sum to do the job off company time. You should be able to pay considerably better than his wage while paying considerably less than what the company would charge you.

Re:Sounds like Pro-Union Legislation

[squiggleslash]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but as you don't link to evidence, and as I've experienced an alternative, I thought I'd point out the other explanation.

In Britain, until 1984, British Telecommunications Plc (better known as "BT") was part of the Post Office, and essentially had a monopoly over all telecommunications. The company was privatized, and the laws that had previously governed telecommunications were very slowly liberalized.

Now, to give you some idea of the scale of what we're talking about, the state of the law in 1983 meant that you couldn't actually wire up a large building with a private phone system. You had to get the Post Office to do it for you. The Post Office argued that it had the right to insist on this, as anything else was a blatent attempt to circumvent its monopoly. Worse, if the system was to be connected to the PSTN (via a PBX or something), then miswiring could cause the entire telephone network to be destroyed.

(But lightning strikes wouldn't cause the same damage. Go figure.)

When the law was liberalized, it remained the case the government had an absolute monopoly on all telecommunications. What they did then was grant two types of license, special telecommunications licenses for entities like BT and Mercury (the half-arsed attempt by Cable and Wireless to build a competitor), and "class licenses" that applied to anyone trying to do a certain type of thing. For example, a class license exists (and does so today, I'm not making this up) that allows you to run telephone wires in your own home.

For a long time, until the EU told them they couldn't do it, you had to get government approval for every piece of equipment you wanted to hook up to the PSTN. Checking for approval meant looking for a device with a green BABT stcker on it. If it didn't have the sticker, you weren't allowed to hook it up. Nobody took it particularly seriously, even BT, the company supposedly most at risk from faulty equipment, ignored violations.

I don't know if Australia's phone service was initially a state monopoly, but if it was, I'd be very surprised if the reason for this type of law isn't similar to the nonsense above. A monopoly is picked apart and an industry deregulated, and little things like the above are left behind, startling anyone who comes across them.

Re:Sounds like Pro-Union Legislation

[walt-sjc]

I looked into the requirements to become a licensed electrician for my brother who was looking at changing careers... They include some classroom requirements and that you pass a test, but more importantly, you need to be an apprentice with a union shop for many years (as they are the only ones that have a "qualified program".) This does two things: it keeps the number of electricians down as only a few people are accepted for these programs, and guarantees cheap labor for at least 5 years. Are the apprentices getting valuable on the job training? Nope - they are the ones doing all the major grunt work of digging ditches, drilling holes, bending conduit, pulling cable, etc. while the senior guys do all the connection work, etc. It's a racket. You could have a degree in electrical engineering, pass any test with a perfect score, be more competernt in practice than any current master electrician out there but you can't get licensed without going through the apprentice program. I've known a couple good people who started down that path and got totally fed up with ONLY doing the crap work. Damn unions. There was a time and a place for them. No longer.

RTFA

[Merlin42]

Did you actually look at the website you linked to?
On the front page it has a link to a pdf listing results from the 2004 inspections / audits. I think it was something like 600 inspections and 400 audits.

The site has gone down now and I closed acrobat reader so I can't find the exact info.

Who paid them off?

[DamienMcKenna]

Sounds like an unfortunate joke. Anyone can string cables together, license or not.

Or gain the licensing yourself and start doing some side work.

Damien

Re:Who paid them off?

[Nutria]

but as far as I'm concerned, the government needs to keep its nose out of my electrical wiring too.

Do you have a clue as to why building & electric codes are necessary?

Pay off your lawmakers

[linuxwrangler]

Seriously, this sort of regulation is generally passed in the name of "protecting" the consumer but in reality it is protecting the outrageous charges of the "registered cablers".

It happens all over. In California, IIRC, we still can't install plastic water supply lines in houses because they are "unsafe". Funny, though, that they seem to be safe in lots of other states. I'm quite sure that the donations from the plumbing contractors and pipefitters' unions doesn't come into play at all.

Our yacht club can't buy booze at Costco because the regulations require us to buy from a "distributor", not a manufacturer or retailor. At a informational meeting for club officers the ABC (alcoholic beverage control) spokesman was pestered with the question "why can't we just go to Costco?" and his rather amusing and refreshingly honest answer was, "because you didn't pay your lawmakers as much as the distribution cartel did."

Re:Pay off your lawmakers

[Anonymous Coward]

[H]is rather amusing and refreshingly honest answer was, "because you didn't pay your lawmakers as much as the distribution cartel did."

And you call yourselves a yacht club?!? Get some more millionaires in there!

Re:Pay off your lawmakers

[ottothecow]

Many yacht clubs these days are not the hangouts of the rich and famous.

They focus much more on competetive racing which for some boat desgins (j105 for instance) does require an owner with deep pockets (not to say the crew--and thus the majority of the sailors--have those same pockets) but others (smaller boats or crewwing) can be participated in with a fairly low investment.

AU governments site down

[nberardi]

Looks like the AU government's website needs to be audited. They obviously don't have the bandwidth to handle a /. :)

One Word

[Deanasc]

Wireless!

Lemme put on my Union Hat.

[clintp]

My father was a Unionized employee, and actually was part of the UAW hierarchy. He didn't believe it all, but since it was a requirement he had to push the propaganda. I can guess what it'd say:

*screws on hat tightly, to cut off circulation to brain*

"Union Cable Layers would have been trained as apprentices in this kind of work, and received whatever other training was necessary for local building codes, etc...

Your average Joe would do a slipshod job and your cabling would be sub-standard and not work as well. In addition, an untrained cable-monkey might lay cables in places that were dangerous to the rest of the building structures (across high voltage, etc..) and possibly causing disaster and lawsuits. You wouldn't want that, would you?

And if you even think of doing this yourself, expect to get a visit from the brotherhood of Electricians, Cable Layers and Egg Candlers Local 547."

Ahem.

Re:Lemme put on my Union Hat.

[ResidntGeek]

One who candles eggs... duh...

Re:Lemme put on my Union Hat.

[Ykant]

An egg candler is a person that inspects eggs, originally by holding an egg up to a candle and looking through.

There was a time when this was a necessary position, as most people are loathe to break open an egg for their cake batter and pour in an embryo.

Applies to cabling companies only (?)

[LordEd]

I grabbed this line before the site got /.ed:

"The Cabling Requirements for Business Code requires cabling businesses to ensure that cablers working for them do cabling work that meets the CPRs." (my bold)

So the way it sounds to me is that if you are a cabling business and either provide poor quality or subcontract poor quality work, you can be fined for it.

Plenum

[bloosqr]

The reasoning is that most people do not realize cabling can be serious fire hazards. You can not use regular cat* cable when wiring up an office and/or house but must use plenum rated cable. Furthermore generic cables can have toxic side effects when burning. There is an interesting history of the use of pvc versus plenum here.

Also take a look at the cable faq and you will notice that it is very obvious that one really must be careful in installing the right type of cable w/ the appropriate firestops between floors (etc).

Re:Plenum

[sribe]

You can not use regular cat* cable when wiring up an office and/or house but must use plenum rated cable.

No you don't. You need to use plenum cable when you run cable through a plenum. That's why they call it plenum cable. If you don't know what the word plenum means, maybe you should look up plenum somewhere.

Actually...

[LordEd]

You must use plenum when wiring through air ducts/passageways in home/offices. The reason is that the regular plastic casing becomes toxic (as do many things when burned), so you want to limit that toxicity to a single room instead of across your entire building transmitted through air ducts. You can use regular cat for wiring that does not involve bridging floors or that goes through ventilation areas.

From the FAQ:

Plenum: Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning (HVAC) air return area -- mostly drop ceilings. Also below raised floors (where the underfloor area is used for ventilation).

Quality work?

[jim_redwagon]

Did anyone else notice the fine job the 'registered cabler' did installing the RJ45 on page 2 of the brochure? That's quality, dead on center work there. ;-)

Asked someone once about the price...

[actor_au]

...of having a full LAN installed in my house(four-five outlets, one hub on a one story building with plasterwood walls(I think, I know they aren't solid brick)) he said about $700 and it would take about 2 days.

I went and bought some wall mounts, screws, sockets etc, stole some cable from an industrial site(they were junking it and the guy on guard just let me take it before anyone asks) then sent my younger, and thinner, brother up into the roof to drag cables to the random holes I'd drilled into the ceiling inside the cupboards around the house, I had some problems with setting the wall ports(didn't know how to set the coloured wires right) and gave up on the project.

I left it for about five months, went back and using a newly acquired cable tester I set-up the sockets correctly, installed the hub and had a fully working LAN in about two hours.

Overall cost to me was about $70 and $20 for the cable tester which I gave to a friend as a Christmas present.
It took about six months from getting the cable to finishing the network but I believe I could have finished it in lest than a day if I'd given a damn about getting it done.

Essentially the asking cost was a rip off.

Another guy I know has a house they spent a summer networking, drilling through solid brick, hanging through air-con ducts and other random adventures until the ten of them and four other rooms were fully networked, their kitchen cupboard is four switches, two webservers/fileservers and some wheatbix no-one want to eat. It cost them a lot of spare time but other than a few drill bits, wall sockets and the cable their costs were non-existant, a cabler would have probably done it faster, but would have charged them at least $2000 for the work as well as a few hundred for the part.

I know about five other people that have networked their houses on almost no budget. Wires stapled to walls, running over rooftops and around the outside of buildings through walls and up attics.
Its a hobby and nothing anymore difficult or dangerous than putting up a painting and that you need some kind of certification for it is insane.

Re:damn...

[clickster]

This is Joe Union. We have reported your illegal cabling activities to the authorities. Taking a note from our RIAA fellows, you can avoid significant prosecution by simply e-mailing us the following: Name: Address: Phone #: Birth Date: Mother's Maiden Name: First School You Attended: National ID Number: Please e-mail all of that information to Foro Forscamoor at trustworthy@nationalbankofnigeria.com Thank you and God have murcy on you kind Sur.

Cost & LV licensing

[redelm]

What do you consider an outrageous quote? I'd expect about US$100/run, or US $4000 for your job. Less if uncertified, everything is short and can be gang pulled. More if spread apart or difficult to run.

Licensing is a different issue. LAN cabling is considered low-voltage electric wiring and various governments sometimes like to control it. Sometimes for the permit & licence income, sometimes to support guilds, occasionally even for public protection (EMI & plenum smoke hazard). I believe *.de requires licencing.

But what if they are right?

[azav]

As I read all the responses, and remember that I do live in earthquake central (SF Bay area), I wonder, "what if the govt is right - at least in principle?"

Sure, plugging in cables is NOT HARD but yes, there are other things to worry about - fire shielding, run through an area people will not want to nail or drill into, and probably more that we don't know about. Stuff that once is mentioned, makes perfect sense but wouldn't be thought up unless someone mentioned it.

Hey, in California, I can see why you would need to be licensed to install PVC pipes. These earthquake things don't happen all the time but when they do, you'll want good bracing and give in your plumbing.

And then again, other parts of CA, do tend to get washed out with mudslides or decide to catch on fire on a semi yearly basis.

All I'm saying is that there's proooobably more behind the scenes that we're dismissing because we don't know about it.

It goes like this :

[ColaMan]

About 15 years ago, our australian telco (Telecom in those days) began to lose it's monopoly. Authorities realised that soon just about any joe from just about any company would be coming around ,fiddling with phone lines. But, oops. Telecom (now telstra) still owns the local loop of copper between the exchange and your house.... and the potential for fark-related-hilarity was obvious to most people.

What to do?

Austel, the telecommunications authority, decided to implement a licensing scheme. Basically , if any part of your network interfaces with the phone lines coming from the street, well, you need to be an austel-licensed cabler to do anything with it. Becoming an austel licensed cabler is not hard, any monkey can do go through the motions.

Perhaps you should investigate asterisk (as some people have mentioned previously). Get all your lines terminated at a patch panel, put a nice server in the cupboard and ethernet from there on out to IP phones and the like. It might come out at the same price at the end, but you'll end up with a much more flexible system. You'll also have the advantage of getting on the IP telecom bandwagon and probably save a heap'o'cash in the long run on your phone bills.

This Old House

[St. Arbirix]

This reminds me of the time Bob Villa built his own house and I think aired some of the construction on his show. As soon as he got done the State of California stepped in and told him that since he didn't get any permits or professional electricians/plumbers/carpenters to work on the house they were going to have to condemn the place.

It's too expensive to be a general handyman for anything anymore.

Hmmmm ... not quite

[jann]

I am an Australian Network engineer (LAN and WAN) and have done a lot of work in/with the telecommunications sector.

The requirement actually is "thou shal not connect anything to the PSTN" which is not austel approved and/or installed by a licenced installer. You can do anything you want with your LAN, you can do anything you want with your telephone cabling on your companies side of the PABX ... but you are not allowed to play with the PSTN side.

But, get your cabeling done by pros unless you know what you are doing. Ask yourself these quick questions:

Do I know when to use single core cable rather than 3 strand (and can I tell the difference between the RJ connectors for them)?
What is the maximim distance for an ethernet cable run?
Do I understand how to terminate cables and their wiring patterns?
Do I know how to test a wiring run?

If you didn't answer an emphatic yes to all those q's get the pros in. If you want to play at cabel monkey do it at home.

J

Nonsense

[nixAddict]

I'm a data installer for a large state university in the US. The the local, state, and federal governments have no problem with "uncertified" individuals working with various data and voice cabling mediums.

Granted, we have licensed individuals to do all our AC work, such as running power to the racks in the data center, and more often than not they pull ethernet and fiber for us, because it's part of their trade, and keeps them busy. (Our in-house elecs are really nice guys).

When it comes down to the termination and actual connection of data and fiber, certification isnt required.

A note of the telephone side of the table -- same situtation. We have phone techs who are responsible for the installation, activation, and maintenance of the phone networks, again certification not needed.

We follow the TIA/EIA standards and the University has it's own more stringent set of rules on top of that regarding closet layout and like matters.

In my experience I have found that when we contract a job out in some instances -- when a new building or addition is in need of a plethora of data and voice lines -- the licensed contractors do awful work. Great, you're licensed, and insured...but that means nothing when you can't even count! (It's happened, really...). Sometimes they make the situtation worse and you have to spend additional resources correcting issues.

And I work in a public institution. Private business should be able to meet their data and voice needs as they see fit. Having a competent individual do the job is one thing, but licensing and the mandates you describe are overboard. It sounds like the government has its nose way to deep into your business. Most likely with pressure from unions to form such regulation.

Having a standard that says a cable that gives of toxins when burned in air spaces is a bad thing is one matter. Forcing you to rely on a paticular labor force to meet some basic needs is another.

Last I checked the risk of life involved in data networks is minimial to the installer, almost non existant to the end user. I'm sure technologies like Power over Ethernet (PoE) bring about new challanges and risks.

Bottomline, who's to benifit?

Damn politics.

Home Wiring

[FiremanJoe]

OK FWIW my 35 cents. As a cableguy for 19 some years, I can tell you it's not that hard, anyone builing a house should slip in on the weeknd before they drywall and diy. Cost of materials less than 300 - 500 bucks US. Electricians typically here in the US run outlets and are charging 80-150 a outlet. Or a builder is including only 2 basic cable tv lines in the plan, which is so bogous. In some areas your local cable operator may be kind enough to come prewire it, I advocate strongly! Run home runs from each room with 3 items some rg-6 quad shield coax (direct tv TIVO will need 2 rg-6 into it), cat 5e line for phone, and a cat 5 or better netork, put all 3 in the same hole home ran to the basement panel where the utilities will come in, even tho wireless technology is come it's still nice to have a hard wired house, a drop in say a main halway for the printer fax copier. with a drop in every room and sometimes 2 in big rooms like living rooms or master bedrooms on oppsoite walls come in handy at christmas time. Put the cable modem or dsl or voip devices in the basement at point of entry then yu have maxiumum speed from the outside source. 1000' of cat 5 runs about 95 bucks, so do the math as a net admin for a drug rehab place we are spending 150 a run for a professional outfit to run them... not including extras like fishing a wall or floor. Theres a white paper I wrote on my site feel free to read.

Another advangate of pro cablers

[sakusha]

The cable pullers I hired always knew what EVERYONE in town was doing. They knew who was installing new computers, who had new facilities, and what was going on in new labs all over town. So hire a pro cable puller, offer them some coffee, and get strategic intelligence on all your competitors. Just make sure you don't reveal to them what YOU'RE doing.