[TowerTalk] Belden and Commscope cables

[Jim Lux]

At 07:24 AM 10/3/2006, Craig Clark wrote:

> >FWIW, it's not that it comes from the far east that makes it low
> >quality.  It's that you can get *anything* made there: good, bad,
> >indifferent.  And the labor costs are so low that you can actually
> >make money making crummy coax.  At the price you can get for crummy
> >coax, you couldn't afford to pay U.S. mfr overheads.  For "good"
> >coax, the price is high enough that you can make it in either place.
> >
>
>Mea culpa.
>
>Jim is right. I did not mean to besmirch overseas or Asian
>manufacturers as I know they are very capable of producing well
>designed products that will meet or exceed US Mil-spec standards for
>coaxial cable.

And Richard Whitekettle wrote:

I been through a cable plant and it was mostly automated with very 
little labor in the process.  I don't understand why Asian cable 
should be so much cheaper considering freight and distribution costs.

---
All of the costs of manufacturing (labor, regulatory compliance(!), 
emissions controls, occupational safety, etc.) are lower in the 
far-east.  There's also the matter of relative currency values and 
the somewhat arbitrary exchange rates, which can make things 
arbitrarily high or low priced.

Therefore, if you want "inexpensive cable" you're more likely to get 
it mfr'd in the far east, sort of independent of quality issues.

I would think that for *identical* products, it's still probably 
cheaper to mfr in the far east (shipping is incredibly inexpensive.. 
it's only a few thousand dollars to ship a 40 foot container from 
Shanghai to Los Angeles ($1900/TEU in 2004), and you can put a lot of 
feet of coax in a container)

However, for the more expensive products, issues like delivery time 
and availability of certifications will probably push towards 
domestic manufacture.


>My error was in remembering some coax I bought years ago from the
>before mentioned chain that fell far short of what I would consider a
>quality product.
>
>My apologies to the group.

None needed... crummy cable is crummy cable, no matter where it's 
made.  It just happens that you can't make money making crummy cable 
in the US, but you CAN make money making it in China, so crummy cable 
is more likely to be of far east mfr than not.

Jim, W6RMK