What technology to use? Fibre offers unconstrained data bandwidth and can connect all the devices within the building from environmental sensors to computing equipment.
It increasingly forms the communications backbone that brings a building to life. But its pervasive application is not always a foregone conclusion.
For example, copper retains some advantages in flexibility such as delivering power over Ethernet.
This avoids running traditional twin and earth electrical cable throughout the building, so saving costs.
Monitoring how devices are using power, upgrading them with newer software and running checks on the infrastructure quality also becomes simpler.
Fibre can more easily overcome the historical 100m-length limitation in standard copper solutions, but it can also be more expensive upfront than a copper-based solution.
Copper connections are also more cost effective on the device side where they are mass deployed. In truth a mixed architecture, certainly in the short term, is more likely.
And in any event, the business decision should not be dictated by upfront capital costs, but made with a view to the business model of the building’s entire life cycle.
Then there is the question of the nature of the cable itself and its containment.
The introduction of BS 6701 to the data cabling industry has thrown a sharper focus on health and safety. What happens in the event of fire?
Will cables burn or give off toxic fumes? The cable’s containment will also have different jobs to do, from protecting it from damage, to preventing eavesdropping.
In major cities around the world the price of real estate is a key business cost for any organisation.
This is one driver for the ever-decreasing size of communications infrastructure, (saving space, but creating heat, which needs to be extracted).
Essentially we are creating a multitude of small data centres in basements across the globe.
Managing the environmental requirements of these data rooms again calls for them to be considered in the early stages of the building’s infrastructure design.