When we install network cabling for a client, the cable itself is the cheapest thing on the invoice. The expensive part is access — opening ceilings, fishing walls, working around finished spaces — and that cost doubles or triples once you’re open for business.
The math of a network cabling job
Most of the cost of network cabling is labor and access, not materials. When a technician already has the ladder up and the ceiling tile out, adding another cable along the same path costs very little. Sending that same technician back a year later to run one new line — now through finished walls, above a kitchen in full operation, after hours so your customers aren’t disturbed — costs many times more.
So when an owner asks for eight network drops, I’ll usually suggest twelve to fourteen, with two cables at every workstation location instead of one. The extra cost at install time is modest. The cost of doing it later is not.
Imagine a 60-seat restaurant mid-buildout. The plan calls for drops at the two registers, the kitchen printer, and the office. While the ceiling is open, adding runs to the host stand, the bar, two camera positions, and a spot above the dining room for a WiFi access point might add a few hundred dollars to the job. Doing those same six runs eighteen months later, after hours, over a finished dining room? That’s a project with a comma in it.
“Isn’t everything wireless now?”
Fair question. WiFi is wonderful for things that move — laptops, tablets, your customers’ phones. But it’s the wrong tool for things that stay put and have to work every single time: your point-of-sale terminals, receipt printers, security cameras, door access controllers, and desk phones. A wire doesn’t drop out when the dining room is packed with two hundred phones all competing for airtime.
There’s an irony here, too: good WiFi itself depends on cable. Every wireless access point on your ceiling needs a wire running to it. If you want strong coverage on the patio you might add next year, the time to run that cable is now, while the ceiling is open.
Where the “extra” drops end up going
In all my years of doing this, I’ve rarely seen an extra cable go unused for long. The spare drop behind the host stand becomes the second receipt printer. The one in the ceiling near the entrance becomes a camera after a break-in down the street. The one in the back corner becomes the office that wasn’t in the original floor plan. The one by the bar becomes a digital menu board.
Businesses change. The building should be ready for it.
Doing those same six runs eighteen months later, after hours, over a finished dining room? That’s a project with a comma in it.
When you genuinely can’t run more cable
Sometimes the budget is truly fixed, or the landlord limits what you can do. Fair enough — there’s a tradeoff here, and I’d never tell you to blow the budget on wire. In that case, ask your contractor for the next best thing: empty conduit with a pull string in it, running from your network closet to the places you might need someday. Conduit is cheap during construction, and it turns a future network cabling project into a simple cable pull.
What to do this week
If you’re planning a buildout, a remodel, or even just rearranging a space you’re already in: walk the floor with a notepad and write down every place a device sits or could sit — registers, printers, cameras, TVs, access points, door controllers, all of it. Bring that list to whoever is doing your construction before the drywall goes up.
And if you’re a Menifee Chamber of Commerce member, we’ll do that walk with you — a free buildout walkthrough where we map the cabling drops, the network closet, and the WiFi coverage together. Email hello@simonsayssystems.com and mention the Chamber.
