Nobody forgets the electrician. The sparks are booked before the walls go up, because everyone understands that chasing cable into finished plaster is a disaster. Data cabling is exactly the same job with exactly the same consequences, and it is almost always an afterthought. We are usually called when the decorating is done, which is the most expensive possible moment to ring us.
The short version
- Treat us like the electrician. Same stage, same reasons.
- Cable is cheap in an open wall and expensive through finished plaster.
- The lead times are the real problem. A new line can take months and nothing accelerates it.
- Sockets in the wrong place are the complaint that lasts for years.
- Ring us at design stage, even if the work is six months out.
On this page
When to actually call
The honest answer is earlier than feels necessary. Specifically:
- At design stage, before drawings are finalised. This is when a data cabinet gets a sensible home instead of the cupboard nobody wanted.
- Before you sign the lease, if you are moving. What a building can actually get for broadband varies street by street and occasionally unit by unit.
- First fix, alongside the electrician. Walls open, floors up, ceilings down. This is the cheap moment and it does not come back.
- Not at second fix. By then the route is decided and we are working around your decisions instead of with them.
- Definitely not after decorating. At that point every cable costs more and looks worse.
If you take one thing from this: ring us when you ring the electrician. You are not committing to anything, and a twenty minute conversation at that stage routinely saves a four figure sum and a week of disruption later.
Why late costs so much more
It is not that the work is harder. It is that the cheap route has gone.
With walls open, a data cable follows the same path as the power, gets clipped in, and disappears. Nobody sees it again. The cost is the cable and twenty minutes.
Once the walls are plastered and painted, the same cable needs a different answer, and every answer is worse:
| Option after decorating | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| Chase the wall out | Cutting, dust, making good, re-plastering and repainting. Plus the room is out of use. |
| Surface trunking | Cheaper, but it is visible forever in a space you have just spent money making look right. |
| Go around through the ceiling | Sometimes possible, often not, and you may still break the decor at both ends. |
| Give up and use Wi-Fi | The common outcome. Access points end up where there is power rather than where coverage is needed, and the result underperforms permanently. |
That last row is the one that really costs, because it is invisible. Nobody records that the Wi-Fi is mediocre because the access points went where the sockets happened to be.
Where the sockets go
Wall data sockets are the detail everyone underestimates, and the one people live with longest.
Getting them right means thinking about how the space will actually be used, not how it looks on a plan:
- Desks. Where will they really sit, and how many positions does each need? Two is usually the right answer per desk, not one.
- Access points. These want to be high, central and cabled, which is rarely where power already is. Plan them first, not last.
- Printers, card machines and tills. Fixed locations that nobody remembers until the day.
- CCTV. Cameras need cable, and it is the same first fix moment.
- Meeting rooms and screens. One socket behind a wall-mounted screen saves a trailing cable forever.
- The cabinet itself. It needs power, ventilation and somewhere it will not be buried behind stock. A cupboard that seemed spare in March is full by September.
Two spare runs to anywhere you might expand is the cheapest insurance in the whole project. The cost while the walls are open is trivial. The cost afterwards is the entire conversation above.
The lead times nobody plans for
This is the part that catches businesses out even when the cabling is done perfectly, and it is the strongest argument for ringing early.
The cable inside your building is on your schedule. The connection into the building is not. A new fibre service, and especially a leased line, can involve civil works, permits and permissions from third parties who have no interest in your opening date. Months, not weeks, and nothing you do accelerates it.
Our posts on how long a leased line really takes and checking what a building can get before you sign cover this properly. In a shared building, add the landlord and the riser to that list, which our post on risers and lead times explains.
We have seen businesses complete a beautiful fit-out and then trade on a mobile hotspot for two months because nobody ordered the line until the painters left.
Phones are the easy bit
Worth saying, because people worry about the wrong thing.
On a hosted phone system the numbers live in software, not on a line into the building, so moving or refurbishing barely touches them. Your existing numbers come with you, and there is no phone system in a cupboard to relocate.
The two things that do need planning: enough network sockets wherever a desk phone will sit, and starting any number porting early, because porting runs to a fixed process that cannot be rushed at the end. Our guide to keeping your number covers it.
A checklist by project stage
| Stage | What should happen |
|---|---|
| Thinking about it | Check what connectivity the address can get. This can change which building you choose. |
| Design and drawings | Agree where the cabinet lives and roughly where sockets and access points go. |
| Before you sign or commit | Order the line. It has the longest lead time of anything in the project. |
| First fix | Cabling in with the electrics. Add the spare runs now. |
| Second fix | Sockets terminated and tested, cabinet fitted, access points mounted. |
| Two weeks out | Kit configured and tested, numbers ported, everything proven before you move. |
| Day one | You open and it works. That is the entire point. |
Planning work? Talk to us at drawings stage
Tell us what you are doing and roughly when. We will tell you what the building can get, what to cable while the walls are open, and what to order now because of its lead time. It costs nothing and it is the cheapest hour of the whole project.