Every office fit-out conversation we have eventually lands on the same question. The architect’s drawings show a structured cabling plan with a port at every desk. Somebody in the room, usually the finance lead, looks at the line item and asks the obvious question: “do we still need that, given the WiFi?” The answer in 2026 is more interesting than “yes” or “no”, and it’s worth taking the time to get right because the decision lasts ten years.
We’ve been part of a dozen-odd office fit-outs in the last two years where this question got debated properly. Here’s where we’ve landed.
What changed
The honest case for “WiFi is good enough now” is real and worth acknowledging. WiFi 6, and now 7, do things that WiFi 5 didn’t. Client density is higher. Roaming between access points is smoother. Latency is genuinely better. For a typical office worker on a laptop doing M365 (Microsoft 365, the Microsoft cloud bundle: email, Word, Excel, Teams, file storage), video calls, web apps, Ethernet (the wired cable network, the alternative to WiFi) is no longer a measurably better experience.
The numbers most people quote for raw WiFi throughput are usually theoretical. Real-world WiFi 6 throughput at desk distance is more like 400-600 Mbps on a good day, which is fine for almost everything an SME does. The argument that “Ethernet is faster” is technically true and operationally irrelevant for most users.
That’s the half of the conversation people focus on; the other half is what actually matters.
What’s actually still wired
Even in the most WiFi-first office we’ve fitted out, the following are still on cable:
The access points themselves. Every WiFi access point (AP, the WiFi box on the wall or ceiling) needs power and a cable run to a switch. PoE (power-over-Ethernet, the standard that runs power down the network cable) means it’s one cable, but it’s still a cable. A 1,500-square-foot floor wants somewhere between four and six APs for sensible coverage, and each one of those needs structured cabling to the comms cupboard.
Printers and MFDs (multi-function device, the office printer-scanner-copier). Wired every time, because WiFi printers are a constant low-grade support call generator and fail in ways that take time to diagnose. The cable cost on a printer is small, and we’ve made it a default and never regretted it.
Meeting room AV. Video bars, room PCs, displays, sometimes a control panel. WiFi works for some of this, but the room codecs and the always-on systems should be wired. The user experience of a meeting room where the video bar drops off the network mid-call is bad enough that the cable cost, modest compared to the alternative, is the easiest decision in the design.
Servers and storage, where they exist. If there’s any kit in the comms cupboard, it’s wired to the switch, every time.
Desk phones, where they exist. Less common than they were, but where they’re in use, wired by default for call quality.
The reception PC, the warehouse barcode scanners, the kiosk machines. Anything that absolutely has to work, where a WiFi drop would be visible to a customer or break a workflow.
What can sensibly move to WiFi
Most of the office, in practice, because the desk-based knowledge worker on a laptop doing M365 and video calls is the dominant office user, and WiFi handles that workload well. Hot-desking and flexible-seating layouts effectively require it; you can’t pre-cable a desk you don’t know who’s sitting at.
The honest framing isn’t “wired or wireless” but “what’s wired, and how much extra wired capacity do we provision for the future”, and the answer to that second question is “more than feels obvious”.
Where the cost is
A structured cabling install in an office fit-out is a meaningful cost: typically a low-three-figure sum per port installed, varying with the building. The temptation to save money by reducing port counts is real, and worth pushing back on.
The cost of installing cabling during a fit-out is the cheap moment. The cost of running cabling after the fit-out, through a finished ceiling, around occupied desks, while the business is running, is two to three times higher per port. And the moments when you discover you need more ports (a new printer, an extra AP because coverage is poor, a wired connection for a workstation that turns out to need the throughput) happen often enough that retrofit is a real cost.
The discipline we’ve ended up with: for any office of more than 15 seats, install cabling at twice the number of ports you think you need today. Pull it through the ceiling now. Terminate the panel side. Leave the floor side as a stubbed cable for the first refurb. The marginal cost is a fraction of the retrofit cost three years later.
What’s coming next
A few things we’re tracking.
WiFi 7 in practice. The 6GHz band genuinely helps in dense offices. Real-world throughput improvements are noticeable. For greenfield fit-outs in 2026 we’re spec’ing WiFi 7 access points. The client devices that can use it are still the minority but rising fast.
Power-over-Ethernet expansion. Increasingly we’re seeing kit that runs off PoE: meeting room screens, sensors, smart lighting controllers, even some monitors. The implication for cabling design is that “data ports” and “power outlets” are starting to merge, and the cabling plan should anticipate that.
Wired-by-default for hybrid workers’ home offices. This is the unexpected one in the list. We’ve watched enough video calls drop on home WiFi that we’re now recommending senior remote workers wire their primary workstation. The cabling is trivial at home, and the user experience improvement on a long call is real.
The death of the dedicated VoIP cable. Where VoIP (voice over IP, desk phones that run over the data network rather than the old phone wiring) is still in use, the move is toward soft phones on the laptop or a single cable shared with the workstation. The two-cables-to-every-desk standard is fading fast.
What we see on the ground
Three patterns worth flagging.
The reception zone. Almost every office under-cables reception. Then a guest WiFi system gets added, then a digital display, then a tablet check-in, then a delivery-management system. Cable the reception zone like it’s a server room, not a desk.
The “we’ll do that wirelessly” room that ends up wired anyway. Almost every meeting room follows the same arc: the first install is WiFi-only, then within twelve months every video bar has a wired uplink because the wireless one keeps dropping. Save the second visit and wire the rooms during the fit-out.
The board room that needs to be very wired. Whatever your default cabling density is, double it for the room where the most important external meetings happen. The cost of a dropped call in that room is higher than anywhere else in the building.
Practical implication for SMEs
The 2026 framing isn’t “wired versus wireless” but “default to wireless, but cable the things that have to work, and over-cable the cabling itself”. For most SMEs that means a thoughtful AP plan, wired drops to printers, meeting rooms, reception and the comms cupboard, and structured cabling at twice the density that feels obvious during the design phase.
That’s our Managed Services practice. We design the network during fit-out, install or oversee the cabling, and run it afterwards.
The under-cabled fit-out is the gift that keeps on giving for the next decade. Every new printer, every extra meeting-room display, every workstation that turns out to need wired throughput, becomes a quote from a contractor cutting holes in your finished ceiling at evening rates. Boardroom calls drop in front of clients. The reception display goes black during a tour. Three years of patches add up to more than the cabling would have cost during the build, the design phase is the one cheap window, and once the ceiling tiles go up every fix is the expensive version.
Planning a fit-out or refurb and wondering how much to cable? Drop us a note at info@jmopartners.co.uk. One of us will read it.
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