Ethernet Cabling in Australia - The not so free and lucky country

* If you are here looking for how to make your own, see http://blog.ausics.net/archives/33-Ethernet-Cabling-Its-Easy.html


This is a response from the ACMA:
Cabling in any premises that is used, installed ready for use or intended for use on the customer side of the boundary of a telecommunications network is defined in Section 20 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 as "Customer Cabling".

Installing Customer Cabling that connects or is intended to connect to a carriers telecommunications network is defined in section 418 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 as "Cabling Work".

Anyone who performs cabling work are defined as a cabling provider and are subject to Cabling Provider Rules as defined in section 421 of the telecommunications Act 1997.


The requirement for any person who performs cabling work to be licensed/registered has existed since the start of deregulation of telecommunications in 1989/90. The only essential difference is that the original Digital Data Exemption (DDE) introduced under the 1989 and 1991 Acts which exempted Security, Fire and Data cabling providers from needing to be licensed was removed with the introduction of Cabling Provider Rules in 2000.

Regardless of the extent of cabling work done or how it connects to a carriers network, the Act and subordinate legislation require the cabling provider to be registered and comply with their registration conditions.



Now, for the life of me I can't figure out why the push to outlaw this, since it is still perfectly legal to do, if your network will only ever be an intranet, that is - never connected to any device which has Internet access, even using wireless that is providing complete physical separation.

So lets look at why this might be so, are they worried about OH&S, people getting electrocuted etc? No - as mentioned, it is legal if your LAN will be a dedicated intranet.
No - TV Antennae installers who also cut holes in walls and drill holes in floors, and run cables where they like through the roof etc in residential homes and high rise buildings are not required to be licenced, so we can strike this reason out.

Are they worried about you totally botching it up and shorting everything causing damage? No - because even if your personal wired LAN accesses the Internet via a wireless device, being %100 physically separated, it's still illegal. In relation to even cheap $50 home switches and $100 ADSL routers, I deliberately shorted all 8 wires together, inserted the test plug into both units for day at a time, and well what do you know, everything kept working as normal, so this can't be a reason.

Are they re-wiring every building that was cabled prior to the CPR being introduced, you know, all those high-rises, those multi billion dollar corporations, Government buildings and Banks that were cabled by unlicenced and un-cable-examined tradies? No...

So one must conclude that it was purely a commercial control interest, after all, why should you or I spend $20 and do it ourselves when we can get a licenced cabler in who will charge us $200 plus, to do just as good of job as we would, right? It is OUR home or business, so we are likely to take far more care in any work carried out, having worked for a cabling contracting company a decade ago (yes after the CPR was in effect), I am not impressed with the work some cablers have done, we would often see complaints about the quality of work performed, and not just talking about the cable work, also the access methods, such as where and how holes are made in floors and walls to get cable through, some of it outright scary, so I know first hand that the licence means stuff all in the real world when it comes to quality of the work performed.

We all know everyone flouts this law, you can't seriously tell me that every teenager, and every adult (be they a hobbyist, or a System Administrator or Network Engineer) in this country who makes patch leads, or runs a cable between a couple of rooms at home or in a small office, is licenced under the Cabling Providor Rules. How many actually even know its illegal? From my experience in talking to people, including a lot of System Administrators, no-one - apart from licenced cablers that is. It is such a joke that even some who shall remain nameless, who were once licenced to do Cabling, who no longer touch phone related work, could no longer be bothered keeping said licences current for something they might need maybe once or twice a year.

Our brothers and sisters from around the world must laugh so hard at the over regulation placed on us aussies by governments intent to screw us over every which way they can, and some... and obviously just because they can. We are one of the very few (only, actually, that I can find) western democratic country where we are prohibited by law from doing this, either as a hobby, or for an income. If someone feels competent enough to do ethernet cabling work on their on home or office (either as proprietor or as an employee) they should be able to do this, some large corporation who wants to wire up an entire floor will likely not run around asking its staff if anyone knows how, they would likely call in a cabler, but a struggling SOHO who's teenage son can do the work, should be able to do the work, free of Government molestation.

Making an ethernet patch lead is not rocket science!
Drilling a hole in the floor, or cutting a small hole in gyprock and installing skirting or wall sockets is not rocket science.
Running cable through a roof and walls is also not rocket science, an 8yo kid could do it!
Connecting the wires to a socket (and all sockets I've seen are colour coded so even if one had no idea, they still could not possibly screw it up), is not rocket science!

I've made plenty, and seen many others that were made by many a joe average, the quality of which I could never fault, if I was to be nit picking, the only thing I notice is a small number seem to make the cables following the American style, a quick search of google and youtube likely explain why with guides showing wiring colour schemes for the T568B standard. AFAIK only parts of America use this method, which stems from AT&T, the rest of the world including Australia use the T568A standard (as shown), but, given half the commercial leads you buy are in the T568B format, it's neither really here nor there, and of course a crossover cable is simply a A-B anyway, but again, it's not a complaint as they are both technically valid in standards, but it is rather strange that T568B is still heavily used even in the U.S given the United States National Communication Systems Federal Telecommunications Recommendations does not recognize T568B, and require all cabling work in U.S. Govt buildings to be of the T568A colour code standard.


The rules are flawed, not only for reasons I have outlined above, but even if one was to obtain a licence to enable them to do their job legally, they perhaps still could not do so, because they need to do hundreds of hours of experience under the watchful eye and guidance of a licenced cabler, given the handful of times a year one might need to do this, it is ridiculous and neigh on impossible (think System Administrators who might make only a handful of patch leads a year).

The previous experience waiver on this probation period, is pretty hard to prove, and, X amount of cables or sockets made must have been within a recent time frame, do they have to admit to committing a crime, just to become legal? We are not talking about phone cabling here, which is typically a two or four wire network run with voltage and amperage, we are talking about simple PC ethernet data cables.


Most other cablers I have had this debate with wont make small patch leads anyway, preferring to buy and on-sell them to customers, or tell them to go to computer store, DSE, or Jaycar etc, this bring up the point of cost for patch leads, they might cost from about $3 or $4 for a 50cm lead. The average electrical store, computer store, or hardware store, often only stock set sizes, the smallest I've seen in them are 50cm, now, picture a household, even a shop or office, they have a switch and a patch panel, a few PC's, a dsl/cable modem, a wireless device, a print server, a file server, rather than having a nicely tight nit group of wires direct from A to A, B to B, C to C etc as seen at the right, we end up with a right ugly mess of a bunch of long cables all over the place as seen at left, disgustingly messy indeed. For the same cost as I pay for one commercially made lead, I could buy one metre of cable and a handful of RJ45's (8p8c's) and do a couple of neat and tidy 20cm patches and I have some cable left over to do a few more, only needing to fork out about a dollar for each connector (although in my reality I already have a bag of about 30 or so connectors left, so I only need buy the cable at about a buck a metre, or a 305m roll for $100 inc GST!)


What is even more of a joke about this, is I might have home made leads stuffed away in a box from prior to Y2K, which I can pull out and if I can prove they were made then, I can legally use them, now - but not the lead I might need to make tomorrow morning.

I think it is about time politicians started to realise we don't need regulation on every facet of life.
This restrictive regulation is wrong, it needs to be repealed, it will be violated and continue to be violated by thousands of people every week, if not every day, and again, mostly, because people are not aware of it being an offence, but also because those who become aware will not fork out the money or time that is required to undertake pre-requisite courses, before they can even take the actual cable course itself, check out some of the official courses and their requirements and costs and you'll soon see that some people are making a good fast buck from this.





References
Clarification Email from Rxxxx Pxxxx at ACMA - not published, held in Email archive.
http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/aca_home/registers/cabling_licences/cprs2000.pdf
http://www.commsalliance.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/2420/S008_2006r.pdf
http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_1897