Offshore cable when first looked at from a price perspective seems like an excellent idea. The difference in price between untested offshore cable and tested USA made cable can be substantial. But, the old saying "you get what you paid for" is unfortunately true in this instance. Much overseas cable is untested. Weaker signal, cross-talk, and signal noise are consequences of almost all untested offshore cable, leading to occasional system failures.

In one occasion, a Fortune 500 company came to us asking to help us regarding their cat 5e system which their internal IT people had installed from offshore cable that had been bought for the task. This cable, when we came in as a consultant, did not follow UTP cable standards. The Fortune 500 company tried to contact their offshore manufacturer, but the manufacturer said there was no guarantee of quality. We eventually had to remove all the offshore cable, which cost them over $70,000, before putting in our 100% tested USA made cable.

Without testing, between 1% to 5% of all cable will be completely unusable. Quality control measures to test for cable failure do not exist in Taiwanese and Chinese cable manufacturing plants. Server Racks and Cable Inc. has seen cases where untested offshore cable in Fortune 500 companies that were trying to cut costs have caused system wide failures.

Cheaper inferior material has resulted in cheaper products in almost all cases. Server Racks and Cable strongly recommends all of our clients to purchase USA made cable where quality control methods using advanced testing devices occur.