WiFi, cameras, access control and AV are only ever as good as the wire underneath them. CDM installs Cat6 and fiber that is routed with intent, terminated properly, tested, and labeled at both ends — in Bremen, Carrollton and across West Georgia.
Three ways this starts
Almost every cabling job we get called for is one of these three. They need different tools and different scheduling — the standard at the end of them is the same.
The cheapest cable you will ever run is the one pulled through an open stud bay. The most expensive is the one somebody wants two years later, in a finished house, behind a tile backsplash.
Most of our work happens in buildings that are already finished and already occupied. Fishing walls, working attics and crawlspaces, and patching what has to be opened.
A wiring closet that grew one emergency at a time is not a network, it is a liability. Nothing in it is labeled, nothing is documented, and nobody wants to be the one to touch it.
What the work is
None of this is exotic. All of it is the part that gets skipped when a job is priced to be the cheapest bid in the stack — and all of it is what you are actually paying for.
Start a projectWhere cable needs to land gets decided on paper first — with the builder on new construction, with whoever runs the building on a retrofit. Count the drops while changing the count is still free.
Cat6 for horizontal runs to jacks, access points, cameras and equipment. Fiber where the distance or the isolation calls for it — between buildings, across a campus, out to a shop or a detached structure.
Cable supported properly, kept away from line voltage, and sleeved through anything it should not be resting on. Bend radius and pull tension respected, because the damage you do pulling cable does not show up until later.
Jacks, patch panels and keystones terminated to the pinout and dressed so the bundle still looks like something a year later. Service loops left at both ends so a future change does not mean a new run.
Every run tested before it gets signed off, and labeled at both ends — the jack and the panel — with a scheme that still makes sense to somebody who has never been in the building.
Wall-mount or floor rack sized for what is going in it and what goes in it next, with patch panels, cable management, power and enough clearance that servicing it is not a two-person job.
On paper first
Drop counts, riser paths and rack layout get settled before anyone opens a box. Changing a drawing costs nothing. Changing a finished wall costs a weekend.
Every location agreed before drywall, and every run home-running back to one point instead of daisy-chaining through the building.
How a run actually gets from the rack to the jack — sleeved, supported, and with a service loop left at both ends.
What goes in, in what order, with airflow, service access and room to grow accounted for before anything is mounted.
What you keep
You cannot inspect a cable plant after the fact — it is inside the walls. What you can inspect is whether anyone bothered to write down what they did.
Every run tested and recorded before we call it done — not spot-checked, and not assumed because the link light came on.
The jack and the panel port carry the same number. This is the difference between a five-minute fix and an afternoon.
Patch panels, cable management, and a layout where following one cable does not require moving nine others.
What is where, what it feeds, and what is left spare. Handed over in writing so the next person is not guessing.
Low-voltage data cabling, pre-wire, terminations, testing and labeling, pathways, racks and patch panels — and the network, cameras and AV that get built on top of it.
Line-voltage electrical work, and the drywall and paint after a retrofit. We coordinate with the trades that do those — we do not pretend to be them.
Common questions
Usually from a builder with a framing date, or an owner holding two quotes that are nowhere near each other.
Cat5e carries a gigabit and plenty of it is working fine in buildings today, so the honest answer is that Cat5e is not broken. The reason we run Cat6 is that the cable is the part of the job nobody wants to do twice. Labor is most of what a run costs, and the difference in material between the two is small measured against that. Cat6 leaves headroom for the faster switch that turns up later, holds up better over long runs, and copes better with interference inside a full bundle. If the walls are open, put the better cable in while it is cheap to do so.
Tested means every run goes on a tester after it is terminated and the result is written down, rather than somebody plugging a laptop in and calling it good because a light came on. A run can light up and still have a split pair, a failing termination or a jacket that was stretched during the pull — faults that surface months later as a camera that keeps dropping or a device that quietly negotiates down to a slower speed. Labeled means the jack in the room and the port on the patch panel carry the same number, marked at both ends. That is the difference between a five-minute fix and an afternoon of unplugging things to see what goes dark. Both the test results and the labeling scheme are handed over in writing at the end of the job.
Yes, and a large part of our work is exactly that. Runs get fished through attics, crawlspaces, closets and interior walls, and the route is planned around what is already in the building before anything is opened. Some openings are unavoidable, because a cable has to get from one floor to another somehow, and we show you where those will be before we start rather than after. The drywall and paint that follow go to the trade that does them properly. The plain version is that a retrofit takes longer and costs more than the same drops would have before the walls closed, and there is no method that gets around that.
At the plan stage if possible, and at framing at the latest — before insulation and drywall. That window is when a drop location is still a mark on a stud instead of a repair. Getting in early also settles the decisions that are genuinely hard to move afterward: where the rack lives, where the internet line enters the building, and which sleeves and conduit get left behind for whatever the house needs in five years. Adding locations to a drawing costs nothing. If the drywall is already up, call anyway. It becomes a different job, not an impossible one.
Mostly the number of drops and how much work each one takes to reach. A run through open studs is quick. The same run fished down a finished masonry wall is not. After that it is the length of the runs, whether fiber or a path between buildings is involved, how much of the existing cable can be traced and kept, and what goes in the rack at the end. We do not price cable by the foot over the phone, because the foot is not the part that varies. We walk the building, count the actual work, and a written quote follows the free network assessment.
Where we pull cable
Cabling is the one thing that cannot be done remotely. Everything below is inside a comfortable drive of the shop.
No cost, no obligation
If the walls are still open, we will walk the plan with your builder. If they are closed, we will trace what is already there and tell you what it can actually carry. You get the findings whether or not you hire us.
Typical response — same business day
