What Does a Business Network Cost

For new cabling, the building fabric matters first: in a new build with prepared conduits, a run takes minutes; in an older building with solid walls, the same run needs chasing, breaches, and often coordination with fire protection.

The number of floors and sockets matters too, not in a straight line but through the paths between them: ten sockets on one floor are easy to plan, ten sockets spread across three floors with few existing risers mean far more effort per socket.

Cable is only half the job. How many switches are needed, and what kind, depends on what connects to them: plain office workstations need different switches than cameras and Wi-Fi access points powered over PoE.

Then there's the server rack — space, ventilation, and a power supply that doesn't take everything down at the first short outage. Reusing an existing rack versus building a new one changes the effort noticeably.

Two networks with identical cable length can be very different jobs. If operations have to keep running during the work, it shifts to evenings or weekends — the cable stays the same length, but the effort goes up regardless.

An old installation that has to be removed first, or missing labelling and documentation for existing cabling, also stretches a project out before a single new cable goes in.

A quote that only lists material and installation looks cheap because it leaves out items that still have to happen: proper planning before the first hole is drilled, test reports proving each run actually meets the required category, and configuring the active equipment rather than just delivering it.

Without documentation and labelling, nobody will know a year from now which cable goes where — the next fault search or extension then costs twice as much. A short handover briefing for in-house IT or facilities staff belongs in the quote as much as the test reports.