Chubb switches to twisted pair for all major installs

Chubb Electronic Security (CES) has signalled what is seen as being the beginning of the end for Coaxial Cabling with the announcement that it is to adopt Twisted-Pair cabling using NVT technology for all new major installations. Chubb Electronic Security is part of UTC Fire & Security, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE:UTX).

“Unscreened Twisted Pair (UTP) cable as an alternative to standard coaxial cable for video connections in a CCTV environment has been in use for some time, but its advantages have been consistently proven to the point that we will now be exclusively using UTP for all future major installs,” says Colin Walters, Head of CCTV at Chubb Electronic Security (CES).

UTP cabling has several advantages over its coax cousin: lightweight multi-pair UTP cabling allows multiple signals to be transmitted (up to one mile) along a single route and is much easier and more flexible to install. UTP has a higher immunity to external interference with commensurately better picture quality; it is also typically less than one tenth of the cost per signal compared to coaxial cabling.

“The cumbersome nature of coaxial cabling makes it difficult to install, and difficult to run over larger distances,” Colin continues, “which makes it expensive. It also tends to be affected much more by external interference and noise that adversely affects picture quality."

“We were one of the first to adopt Twisted Pair several years ago, perhaps when the market wasn’t ready for it. Now things have changed, and customers are positively asking for Twisted Pair and specifically NVT technology, hence our decision to move away from coaxial for all future major CCTV work.”