When the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has needed reliable ethernet cable to support student internet and data bandwidth in new building projects or upgraded building projects for new building projects they’ve turned to PCA throughout the past few years because they had the best price and products they could rely on.
Chris Waddell, Telecom Engineering Manager at UAB, and the person responsible for the IT infrastructure updates, says that whenever a new project or renovation is done at the university, he turns to the companies that give him consistently good products at fair prices, and PCA has become his trusted cable provider.
“It’s a good product and I’d put it up against anyone,” he says.
Waddell has worked at UAB for the last 9 years. He is in charge of all of the network-related projects the university undergoes and is the go-to guy when choosing manufacturers and components for these projects.
“UAB is expanding or renovating every day,” he says. “Work isn’t stopping anytime soon.”
Waddell has used PCA products in new buildings and renovations and says because the products are available from multiple vendors, it would be in the plans for any upcoming projects as well.
PCA cable has been installed in many buildings throughout UAB in recent years including:
There are multiple uses for PCA cables at UAB—primarily indoor and outdoor PoE devices like IP cameras, wireless access points, print and FAX lines and VOIP phones and computers are counted as primary uses.
PoE means Power over Ethernet, and refers to one cable that supplies both power and data over a CAT-3 or higher type cable.
Waddell says the cables provided to UAB from PCA are CAT-6 and CAT-6A, which makes them capable of handling 1 to 10G of data to a desktop computer.
When a new project begins or building is constructed at UAB, cable prices are considered, but the most important piece of information is the spec list that Waddell has put together. And because Waddell believes in the quality and price of the PCA product, our cable is on that list.
Electrical contractors doing the work put in the actual cable and he says new buildings are getting CAT-6A cables. Depending on the project he says contractors won’t necessarily know which brand of cable to use.
“Most of the time when they don’t know which to use, they ask,” he says. “I tell them to put in Proterial.”
One of the aspects of working with PCA cable is that not all competitors offer a lifetime warranty like we do. Waddell says the warranty was important when deciding which cable to use.
In fact, Waddell says the lifetime warranty means he can be flexible when he sources copper connectivity components from manufacturers. He says it is one of the main reasons he went with PCA products.
We at PCA pride ourselves on the quality, availability and price of our products. When we do work with Universities like UAB, it highlights the important ways our products are used. If you are looking for a cable provider, let PCA help you the way we have helped UAB!
Click here to learn more about PCA Cable options.
