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Last edited 14 Oct 2021

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BSRIA Institute / association Website

Convergence and big data, The impact on structured cabling

BSRIA, it is a non-profit distributing, member-based association that describes its mission as ‘to make buildings better...’ by enabling ‘…the building services and construction industries and their clients to enhance the value of the built environment, by improving the quality of their products and services, the efficiency of their provision and the effectiveness of their operation.’

BSRIA's Worldwide Market Intelligence (WMI)division publishes a portfolio of market studies, providing off-the-shelf solutions for a wide range of product areas in HVAC, structured cabling, building controls and bathroom equipment markets.

In August 2015, BSRIA published Convergence and big data, The impact on structured cabling, by Lone Hansen.

The main objective of the study was to forecast the copper structured cabling market to 2020. It builds on a previous study published in 2014 and quantifies the impact of convergence on the copper structured cabling market by estimating the number of drops / nodes being installed for wireless access points and distributed building services.

It is presented in a 58 slide PowerPoint format, including supporting facts, figures, charts and illustrations and presents information about the structured cabling market, key trends, convergence, types of power over ethernet (POE) and uptake.

Its contents include:

General trends and definition of convergence.
Convergence.
Internet of Things (IoT).
Model: Convergence, quantifying the impact by region 2014 – 2020.
Type of cabling used.
Wireless LAN (Local Area Network).
Power over Ethernet.
Appendices.

It reveals that the adoption of IP-based products and convergence is increasing with the growth in the number of internet users, personal devices, machine-to-machine connections and the internet of things (IoT). It suggests that 4.9 billion devices are connected to the IoT, and this is predicted to increase to 50 – 200 billion by 2020.

Author of the report, Lone Hansen said: “The majority of future growth in structured cabling is related to installations of wireless access points and other services such as CCTV, access controls, A/V, whiteboards, BACS (Building Automation and Control Systems) and metering. The total number of outlets is expected to increase from 144 million in 2014 to 175 million by 2020, a growth rate of 3 – 4 per cent per year. The forecast for voice and data outlets is pretty flat, growing by around 2 per cent per year. WAPs (wireless access points) and Distributed Building Services accounted for 12 per cent in 2014 increasing to 17 per cent in 2020.

“The number of fully vertically converged buildings is increasing but is still limited. Nearly all have been designed and purpose-built around the technology to provide a unified solution. The penetration of convergence also varies significantly depending on the country/region with the highest uptake in US, the UAE and the UK and the lowest in Asian countries like China. The number of WAPs shipped is forecast to increase by 27 per cent worldwide in 2015 to 14 million units followed by an annual increase of 10-15 per cent to 24 million in 2020.

“PoE (Power over Ethernet) uptake is mostly used for VoIP (voice over) phones with an estimated 80 per cent uptake. Around half of the WAPs are powered by PoE. They are mostly installed in the ceiling, which enhances the convenience of using PoE. An estimated 30 per cent of CCTVs are powered by PoE, as are 20 per cent of access points. However, there are large regional differences.”

--BSRIA