Telephone and Communication Wiring for a Palace

So you are faced with providing a solution to deliver voice, data, and video to various locations in the palace. I have been in the telecom industry for over 30 years and the methods for distribution and the technology supporting the aformentioned services has certainly changed over the years. The conduit infrastructure is in place and hopefully it was installed by someone that understands the need for smooth sweeps and not placed by an electrician that is used to installing 90 degree turns. Also should have pull strings in place hopefully to allow you to place the cable(s) needed for the install. For pure data distibution you could run cat 5 or cat 6 ethernet cable which would easily handle up to 100mbps. With a large facility you could identify logical hubbing points to distribute from. This would help ensure better quality and also help you manage the faciltity and equipment. You might also need to consider secure wifi halo's in strategic locations?

For voice you could go "old-school" and run a network of copper pairs for traditional analog telephone service and provide some form of switching via a mini pbx. It would be much easier to consider a VoIP solution though, and utilize your data infrastructure and hubbed switching network. You could use a variety of VoIP phones on the market, and if you needed to use an analog phone for a certain location you could employ the use of an ATA (analog teminal adapter) which would convert the standard phone for use over a data\VoiP network. If you can find a local service provider that has a VoIP switch and provides business class VoIP services they may be able to set this kind of local VoIP network up and provide a virtual VoIP PBX service with custom inbound and outbound calling options, station-to-station calling and call groups, and of course LD, and local services with class service features like call waiting, cnam, etc... . Lots of things to consider and one major factor is "who will provide the underlying services for you?" Its certainly easier if you can get a qualified provider to help provide a composite of all of the services you need, otherwise alacarte solutions from various providers are certainly viable but harder to manage from a service and maintenance perspective. Get SLA's (service level agreement) from your service provider(s) to ensure you have some form of reference regarding a formal agreement of service quality and their commitment to responding to your service needs.

Just a note on security. The security system should probably be segregated in some fashion to ensure qos is maintained and intrusion prevention is controlled. You will also need to consider how you will manage your internet drain connection to your provider and which kind of routers, firewalls, and other security management tools you will need. I recently worked for an organization that sells a security appliance that can filter ingress\egress via Ip, country code, etc. It actually sets in front of your firewall. At any rate this is always an area to keep in mind depending on the need for network security. If this location is really huge, perhaps you should consider setting up a small secure data room facility with power and HVAC back-up. This data center would also give you direct access to the router management and security monitoring displays. Even the method of providing electricity and outside world cable facilities might benefit from redundant point of entry. This all might sound like overkill, but I have worked with a lot of disaster recovery initiatives and real-life experiences over the years and its something to consider at the very least.

The video could be high quality coaxial cable or fiber and the system might be RF\digital or could even potentially be an IPTV solution. Again it really depends on your providers and the services they support. The jack interfaces in the rooms can be modular with the ability to allow you feed various types of interconnection out of one startegically placed jack (if that makes sense). Streaming video solutions via the internet can be connected directly via your data network and provide an overlay to a standard RF or IPTV solution and in some cases may end-up being the primary feed for video depending on the viewers video choices.

At the end of the day my suggestion to you is to retain someone that can help you sort through the various options and help you create a sound project plan for designing, installing, commissioning, and implementing the services you need. I have just scratched the surface to provide a little information and the details can really get complicated. Dont underestimate the need for proper planning and expertise on this or you will end-up wearing the results.

Good luck with your efforts and I hope this information helps a little bit.