Boulder Phone Helps JCC Get Wired

When Boulder Phone bid on the Boulder Jewish Community Center (JCC), it presented a daunting, yet manageable project. Requiring over 300 runs of voice & data cable for VoIP phones, computers, printers, wireless fidelity (WiFi) and internet protocol television (IPTV), the JCC was building a large facility that included a variety of needs.

             The cabling starts at the main distribution frame (MDF) where both Telephone company (Centurylink) and separately from the Cable Company (Comcast) have conduits to the edge of the property for copper wire and/or optic fiber access, depending on the needs of the JCC. The Boulder JCC is segmented into five different areas:

           With the MDF (main wire closet) located in the Recreation area, it was necessary to pull interconnecting cabling between the four other locations. The distance from the MDF to Administration and the Education areas was far enough to require fiber optic cable for the interconnection.  Each area was then cabled from these intermediate distribution frames (IDFs) wire closets for the necessary voice, data, & video cabling as specified.

Over 25 WiFi access points were cabled in anticipation of active wireless use both now and in the future. For proper cable management Boulder Phone identified, established, & routed cable along common, accessible paths taking care not to kink or stress the cable as it was pulled to each outlet, wall mount, or ceiling location. After several walk throughs, and detailed review of blueprints; Boulder Phone amassed over 40,000′ of cable along with its arsenal of cabling tools: tie wraps, tape, labels, pushrods, fish tape, carabineers, Velcro, ladders, & scissors lift to execute the art & science of this rough-in cabling phase.

            Taking each of the five different areas in succession offered an incremental method to establish a comprehensive cable infrastructure. Boulder Phone was one of six cable crews on this job that included

       Once the cable was roughed-in the next step was to terminate, trim, test, and label the cables at each end. This is detailed, deliberate, and exacting work that ensures once an endpoint is attached it will work as intended. While terminations in the MDF and the IDFs can take place after rough in of walls and other inside building material, the telephone outlet terminations throughout each of the five areas of the JCC have to wait until the construction has advance enough to be nearly complete. Once the paint and carpet were installed Boulder Phone was able to dispatch its crews to complete outlet terminations.
With a complete outlet-to-IDF and IDF-to-MDF cabling infrastructure in place the JCC is now ready to install the local area network LAN internet switches, computers, printers, WiFi access points, and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephones across the facility. The equipment in the MDF and IDFs will be protected with uninterruptable power supply (UPS) for battery backup, power sags or brown-outs, lightning and power spikes. The VoIP phones and WiFi access points will use Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) switches to eliminate the need for a nearby power source at their installed locations; e.g. a wall mount phone or a ceiling mounted WiFi access point (WAP).

            The Boulder JCC has been built as a state of the art gathering place with a comprehensive cabling architecture that accommodates communication needs for audio, voice, data, and video both now and for years to come.