Earlier this year, the cabling registrars issued a survey to Registered Cablers to find out what they’re most concerned about in our industry and what they’d like to know more about – the graph above shows what they collectively said. The results from this survey and the actions taken by BICSI/BRCA – in association with the other registrars ACRS, ASIAL, FPAA and TITAB – should be of interest to all ICT Infrastructure professionals.
Cablers were asked to rate 10 topics they’d be interested in learning more about, including such topics as the AS/CA S009 Regulations, Deploying Wireless Properly, Infrastructure for the Internet of Things, Risk Mitigation (or “Covering Your Butt”) & HDBaseT, amongst others.
Notably, the AS/CA S009 Regulations stood out, so we’re addressing it as the first topic in a series of free webinars for Cabling professionals that BICSI/BRCA, in association with the other registrars will be running this year. The first webinar is scheduled for 7.00 – 8.00am AEST on Tuesday 8 August, with the title ‘The Importance of Applying S009 and Adhering to its Guidelines’, which will be delivered by Paul Stathis, CEO of BICSI South Pacific and Ian Millner, ICT Infrastructure Consultant for the International Copper Association Australia (ICAA), both of whom served on the committee that developed the current edition of AS/CA S009 Regulations.
Click here to register to attend that webinar The Importance of Applying S009 and adhering to its Guidelines. Once you have registered, you’ll receive the link to the webinar.
Returning to the survey results
To identify what topics to address in the webinars to follow this first one, the next biggest concern expressed was the quality of cabling work being done by so-called “cowboys”, many of whom were reported simply as ‘electricians’. Sadly it was reported that some people installing ICT infrastructure today aren’t registered cablers (those whom registered cablers refer to as “cowboys”). This is illegal in Australia and it’s up to all of us to report ALL such instances directly to the regulator – the ACMA. So we will address the correct procedures to ensure compliance (compliant products & workmanship, TCA1 & TCA2 forms, non-compliance reporting to ACMA and what they do with it, etc) in a forthcoming webinar.
Another major ‘bug-bear’ identified in the survey was the frequent requests from consumers to move NBN equipment (mostly poorly placed NTDs) or re-route lead-in cabling, exacerbated by the uncertainty of what approval or documentation is officially required from NBN to do it. So we’ve received several requests to cover this topic in a specific Webinar too (by the way, it’s worth having a copy of the current NBN Authority to Alter and reading it).
The lack of auditing undertaken by the ACMA was also raised quite a bit. This is a standing agenda item for all registrars, but it’s has been a hard nut to crack. What we need is more complaints from the public, so if you see bad work, tell your customers to report it to the ACMA.
Digital media on coax also featured, particularly installing cabling to AS/NZS 14763 part 2 of a customer’s premises and overlaying remote power. This then overlaps Power over Ethernet (PoE) which brings in heat-rise in cable and the derating of cabling system under remote power.
There were other issues you raised—fibre was also important—but now we’ve started talking, they can all be handled in our series of Webinars. We hope to see you online soon on our Zoom., where we hope to address issues that you’ve also expressed concerns over.