Cabled Right.

Hi, I’m Namra.

I run Cabling For U. Since 2018 we’ve installed Cat6, Cat6A, fibre, CCTV, burglar alarms and access control across Auckland — from a single outlet behind a TV in Te Atatū to multi-cabinet fit-outs in Penrose and villa retrofits in Mt Eden. 350+ jobs in, every copper run Fluke-tested and certified to AS/NZS 3080 before we hand it over.

Most of my job isn’t pulling cable. It’s diagnosis. A network that doesn’t work the way it was promised — slow WiFi in the back bedroom, dropped video calls in the home office, a CCTV system that isn’t actually recording — is almost always a cabling problem. Fix the cabling and the rest falls into place.

This guide is how I’d explain it to a friend. By the end you’ll be able to decide what you actually need (and what’s overspec), read a quote and see what’s missing, hand a clear brief to any installer — including us — and know what “done right” looks like on the day.

This is general information from a licensed Auckland cabling and security installer. It is not electrical or fire-safety advice — mains-voltage work must be done by a registered electrician. When in doubt, call us before you cut a wall: 0800 222 546.

Why this guide exists

Cabling is a strangely invisible product. You can’t see Cat6 once it’s behind a wall. You can’t tell whether a fibre core was fusion-spliced or just crimped. You only find out when something doesn’t work — and by then the wall is closed.

The fix isn’t to become a cabling expert. It’s to know what the standard is, what “tested” actually means, and what should be in your hand at handover. Once you know that, every quote either passes or it doesn’t.

1. Cat6 vs Cat6A vs Cat5e

The short answer: Cat6A everywhere if you can; Cat6 for most rooms; Cat5e nowhere new.

Cat5e

Rated to 1 Gbps over 100 m. Fine for streaming, video calls and basic office use — and obsolete. Reusing existing Cat5e already in your walls is sensible. Specifying new Cat5e in 2026 isn’t.

Cat6

1 Gbps to 100 m, 10 Gbps to 55 m. The default for homes and most offices; good for the next 10–15 years.

Cat6A

10 Gbps to 100 m, shielded (F/UTP or S/FTP). Built for WiFi 6/7 access points, 4K cameras and anything that needs 2.5 Gbps or more. Costs more than Cat6 per outlet, and carries a 25-year manufacturer system warranty when installed by a certified cabler.

Room by room

• Bedrooms, lounge, dining: Cat6.
• Office, study, gaming room: Cat6, or Cat6A if you can.
• Cabinet, patch panel, mesh WiFi backbone: always Cat6A.
• Outdoor camera runs: outdoor-rated Cat6A (UV-stable, waterproof jacket).
• Existing Cat5e in the walls: keep it unless you need real 10 Gbps.

2. Your fibre isn’t slow. Your cabling is.

Most “slow fibre” complaints aren’t fibre. They’re the wiring between the fibre box on your wall (the ONT) and your WiFi — and the WiFi itself.

The chain: fibre from the street → ONT → patch cable → router/WiFi → your phone or laptop.

Where it usually breaks — real Auckland examples

• Mt Eden villa, 1908: ONT in the garage, router 5 m away on a 15-year-old patch lead rated to 100 Mbps.
• Albany two-storey: ONT upstairs, TV downstairs, signal through two brick walls. 5 GHz WiFi loses roughly 30 dB per wall.
• Penrose office: router buried behind a media cabinet with no line of sight to anywhere.
• Howick home office: eight-year-old router that doesn’t speak WiFi 6, topping out at 200 Mbps whatever the plan says.

The fix

• A Cat6 or Cat6A run from the ONT to a mesh WiFi base in a central, line-of-sight spot.
• Mesh access points — one per floor, ceiling-mounted, Cat6-backhauled to the main router.
• Hardwire the streaming TV, the gaming PC and the work desktop. WiFi for phones and tablets only.
• A WiFi 6 or WiFi 7 router.

Done right, a gigabit fibre plan delivers 600–900 Mbps to a wired desktop and 200–400 Mbps over WiFi. Done wrong, the same plan delivers 30 Mbps — and you pay the slow-internet tax forever.

3. WiFi that actually works

Rule 1: WiFi is line of sight

Walls eat signal. Brick eats more. Concrete eats most. The router has to “see” the device, or you need an access point that can. The physics doesn’t care what the box promises.

Rule 2: Mesh is not extenders

Real mesh systems (UniFi, Eero Pro, TP-Link Deco, ASUS ZenWiFi, Google Nest WiFi Pro) share one network name, hand devices off automatically and — crucially — backhaul to the main router over Cat6, not over the air. Old-style wireless extenders halve your bandwidth at every hop.

Rule 3: One access point per floor

A two-storey home with the router in the downstairs lounge has bad upstairs WiFi by physics. Put a mesh AP upstairs, Cat6-fed from below. Solved.

The standard CFU mesh-ready home plan

• 1 × Cat6 outlet near the front door (ISP/fibre cabinet).
• 1 × Cat6 outlet in the lounge ceiling (downstairs AP).
• 1 × Cat6 outlet in the upstairs hallway ceiling (upstairs AP).
• 1 × Cat6 outlet behind every TV.
• 1 × Cat6 outlet behind every desktop.
• Optional: one in the kitchen for a wall display or smart appliance.

Want a free on-site survey? Book one here — fixed written quote in 24 hours.

4. Home CCTV, done right

What you actually need

• Four cameras, 4 MP minimum — the sweet spot for cost per useful pixel.
• PoE (power over Ethernet): one Cat6 cable per camera, no separate power runs.
• A small NVR with a 2 TB drive, locked indoors. Never outside, never visible from a window.
• Cameras hardwired by Cat6. Wireless cameras die when the WiFi or the power dies — exactly when you’d need them.
• Footage retention of two to four weeks. More is storage you’ll never review.

Where four cameras live

• Driveway and vehicle approach — the angle insurers care about most.
• Front door — face capture for parcels and visitors.
• Back garden — most break-ins come through the back.
• Side gate or garage entry — the second most used route.

5. Burglar alarms — what the insurer wants

The minimum a home alarm needs

• A panel with an 8-hour-plus backup battery and an IP or cellular communicator. Local-only sirens don’t satisfy most insurance policies.
• Three or four PIR motion detectors covering the main living spaces and the hallway by every external door.
• Reed switches on every external door — front, back, internal garage door, sliders.
• Internal siren plus an external strobe. The strobe is what insurers and police look for from the street.
• A smartphone app for arming, disarming and the event log.

Monitored or self-monitored?

Self-monitored: the panel sounds the siren and pushes a notification to your phone. Monitored: the same hardware, plus a NZ monitoring station receives the alert and can dispatch a patrol. Monitoring is billed month to month and is often required for a commercial insurance discount. For homes, go monitored if your insurer gives you a real discount; otherwise self-monitored with a good app and good neighbours.

More on alarm installation in Auckland.

6. Office cabling — the one-page spec sheet

Paste this into any RFP. The right installers will recognise themselves; the wrong ones won’t tender.

Minimum spec for a 2026 NZ office cabling job

• Cable: Cat6A F/UTP or S/FTP to every workstation. Cat6 only where explicitly justified.
• Termination: keystone jacks at the outlet; 24-port patch panels in a 12U–24U cabinet at the comms room.
• Outlets per workstation: 2 × Cat6A (network and voice/PoE).
• Floor boxes for hot-desk zones (2 × Cat6A + 4 × power per box).
• WiFi: one access point per 80–100 m², ceiling-mounted, line of sight, on Cat6A with PoE+.
• Backbone: OS2 single-mode 12-core fibre between comms rooms (OM4 only for a specific short-run 40/100 GbE need).
• Labelling: TIA-606 addressing on both outlet and patch panel.
• Testing: Fluke DSX (or equivalent) Cat6A certification on every copper run; OTDR plus LSPM on every fibre core. PDF reports at handover. Non-negotiable.
• Standards: installed to TIA/EIA and AS/NZS 3080.
• Warranty: 25-year manufacturer system warranty (Legrand, CommScope) plus the installer’s written workmanship warranty.

See how we run a fit-out: office data and network fit-outs.

7. Commercial CCTV and access control

CCTV — what to spec

• IP cameras on PoE+ (not analogue, not WiFi), Cat6A to each, terminating in a labelled patch panel.
• 4 MP for general coverage; 8 MP only at vehicle entries and points of sale where plate or face detail matters.
• NVR with redundant drives, four weeks’ retention minimum, in a locked cabinet.
• Video management software with per-user access logging.

Access control — what to spec

• Card, fob or mobile readers at every external door and secure internal zone.
• Electric strikes for low-traffic doors; mag locks for glass doors — always with request-to-exit, door contact and break-glass override.
• Controller in a secure cabinet, networked to a central system. Gallagher, Inner Range and Paxton are all solid NZ choices — we install all three.
• Audit-log retention of 90 days minimum.

Privacy Act 2020 — the part most installers skip

CCTV and access systems collect personal information. You need a privacy statement, signage and a documented access policy. Your installer can’t write the policy, but they can install with retention limits and access controls that make compliance straightforward — and document who holds recorder credentials. Ask whether they’ve done it before. Our plain-English guide: CCTV and the Privacy Act.

Managing more than one building? See security for property and facilities managers.

8. Fibre backbone and comms-room design

Fibre backbone

• OS2 single-mode is the default for inter-building, inter-floor or any run over 50 m.
• OM4 multimode only for specific short-distance data-centre needs.
• 12 cores minimum, even if you’re lighting two today. Splicing is cheap; re-pulling fibre isn’t.
• Fusion-spliced terminations, not mechanical. LC connectors.

Comms room and cabinet

• 24U floor cabinet for offices over 20 staff; 12U wall cabinet for smaller fit-outs.
• Vented door, side-mount PDU, cable management on every U.
• Dedicated circuit on its own RCD; earth bond visible and labelled.
• Cooling: passive under 8U of active gear, active above.
• UPS sized for 30 minutes of switches and APs.
• Lock the cabinet. Log who has the key.

More on fibre installation in Auckland.

9. The standards we certify to

TIA-568 / ISO 11801

The international cabling standards: categories, performance, distance limits, termination. Any installer quoting cable should reference them.

TIA-606

The labelling standard. Every cable, port, outlet and cabinet gets a structured ID that appears on the as-built drawing, the cable schedule and the certification report. Marker pen is not TIA-606.

AS/NZS 3080

The New Zealand and Australian standard for telecommunications installations in customer premises — pathways, spaces, earthing, and how cabling integrates with the building’s electrical system. Every CFU job is installed and certified to it.

AS/NZS 3000

The wiring rules for mains electrical work. Cabling installers need to know where low-voltage signal cabling ends and mains work begins, and coordinate with the registered electrician on site.

Privacy Act 2020

As in section 7 — CCTV and access systems collect personal information, and the install should make compliance possible.

10. Eight questions for any installer

Send these to every installer you ask for a quote. How they answer tells you everything.

1. What category of cable are you using, what brand, and what’s the manufacturer system warranty?
2. Will you Fluke-certify every copper run and OTDR every fibre core? Will I get the PDF reports before the final invoice?
3. What’s your workmanship warranty — how long, and what does it cover?
4. Will you label every outlet and patch-panel port to TIA-606, and give me a printed cable schedule at handover?
5. What standards does this installation conform to? (Listen for TIA/EIA and AS/NZS 3080.)
6. What’s your public liability cover, are you Site Safe registered, and — for security work — what’s your PSPLA licence number?
7. What’s the fixed price, and what’s the variation policy if something turns up behind a wall?
8. When can you start, and what’s the timeline to handover including documentation?

Confident, specific, written answers to all eight — you’ve found a professional. Vague answers or “don’t worry about that” — keep looking.

Red flags to walk from

• “Trade-grade cable.” No brand means no manufacturer warranty and no way to check the spec.
• No test reports, or “we test as we go.” If there’s no Fluke PDF, the cable was never certified.
• A lump-sum price with no outlet count. You can’t compare it, and neither can they when something’s missing.
• Warranty by phone only. If it isn’t written on the quote, it doesn’t exist.
• “We’ll sort the labelling later.” Later never comes, and the next IT person inherits a mystery.
• Security work without a PSPLA licence number. It’s a legal requirement in New Zealand, not a nice-to-have.
• Pressure to sign today. A fixed written quote should hold for weeks.

Print-ready scorecard — compare up to three quotes

Tick what each quote actually says in writing. A blank is a “no”.

Seven or eight ticks: a professional quote. Five or six: ask for the missing items in writing before you sign. Four or fewer: walk.

11. About Cabling For U

We’re a small, focused Auckland crew: Cat6, Cat6A, fibre, CCTV, burglar alarms, access control, structured cabling. Homes and small-to-medium commercial. 350+ jobs since 2018, rated 5.0 on Google. No call centre — you talk to the people who do the work.