Ask three contractors in Dubai for a price per network point and you will get three different numbers, none of which can be compared, because a point is not a unit of work. It is a run of cable whose cost depends almost entirely on where it goes, what it passes through, and who is sitting under it while the work happens.
This is what actually determines the figure, in roughly the order of impact.
1. Route length and cable path
Cable is priced by the metre but installed by the route. A desk twelve metres from the comms room and a desk on the far side of a floor plate are the same outlet with very different labour and material content. Averages hide this: a floor where every run is long is not the same job as one where half are short.
Where runs approach or exceed the distance limit for balanced copper, the answer is not a longer cable — it is a secondary comms position and a fibre backbone to it. That is a sensible design decision, and a significant cost step that no per-point rate contains.
2. Containment and building fabric
If there is usable tray, trunking and riser capacity along the route, cabling is quick. If containment is full, absent, or shared with services that cannot be disturbed, new containment has to be installed first — and that is often the largest single element of a cabling quotation.
Accessible ceilings, raised floors and clear risers reduce cost. Solid slabs, fixed plasterboard ceilings, glazed partitions, fire-rated walls needing proper sealing and cores that must be drilled all increase it. So does an existing estate of undocumented legacy cable that has to be traced, worked around or removed.
3. Occupied space and working hours
Cabling a shell space during fit-out, before ceilings close, is the cheapest cabling there is. The identical scope in a live office with staff at desks costs more: work is phased into evenings and weekends, areas are handed over in sections, protection and clearing are needed daily, and progress is limited by what can be reached.
Building management adds its own programme: access permissions, permits for high-level or hot works, lift bookings, and defined quiet hours. None of it is optional and all of it consumes time. It is also the most common cause of delay, which is why we settle it at survey rather than on the night.
4. Category and specification
Cat6A costs more than Cat6 in cable, connectivity, containment fill and installation time, and in some environments it is clearly the right choice — high-density wireless, long horizontal runs, or a space expected to serve for a long time without recabling. In others Cat6 remains entirely sensible. We looked at that decision in detail in Cat6 or Cat6A?
Shielded systems, higher fire-performance cable required by the building, and outdoor or armoured cable for external routes each move the specification further. So does the choice of outlet, patch panel and rack hardware — modest per unit, meaningful across hundreds of points.
5. Comms room and rack work
Every run terminates somewhere. Whether the existing rack has patch panel space, power, cooling and physical room determines whether the job includes a rack build, a rack extension, or simply more panels. An overloaded or chaotic existing rack often needs remedial work before new cabling can be landed sensibly.
6. Testing, labelling and documentation
This is the line most often missing from the cheapest quotation. Testing every permanent link with a field tester, issuing the results, labelling both ends and producing a port schedule and rack elevation is real time — and it is what turns cable into an asset you can manage.
Untested cabling is not cheaper. It is deferred cost, paid later in intermittent faults nobody can attribute and in the day someone has to trace a run through a ceiling because no record exists. Read more on testing and certification.
How to get a comparable price
Give every contractor the same information: a floor plan with outlet positions and quantities, the comms room location, the cable category required, the access and working-hours constraints, and an explicit requirement for test results, labelling and documentation. Then insist each of them walks the site.
Quotations produced on that basis can be compared. Per-point rates issued by email cannot, and the gap between them almost always closes once someone has actually seen the ceiling.